GIFT   OF 


The    Development    of    Aj!ni$ajiqaii 
Prisons  and  Prison  Customs 


1776—1845 


With  Special  Reference  to  Early  Institutions  in 
the  State  of  New  York 


By  O.  F.  LEWIS.  PLD. 


Late  General  Secretary  American  Prison  Association  and  the  Prison  Association  of  New  York 


Published  by  the  Prison  Association  of  New  York 


Hrrr9H 


4^ 


ALBANY 
J.    B.   LTON   COMPANT,    PRINTERS 
1922 


FOREWORD 


Dr.  Orlando  F.  Lewis,  the  author  of  this  book,  spent  some  five 
years  in  gathering  material  for  it.  He  died  before  it  was  completed, 
and,  therefore,  was  unable  to  make  a  final  revision  of  the  manu- 
script, or  to  complete  one  or  two  of  the  chapters,  which  unfortu- 
nately are  left  in  an  unfinished  state.  The  book  represents  an  earn- 
est scholarly  effort  on  the  part  of  a  man  unusually  well  qualified 
to  prepare  such  a  history.  For  some  twelve  years  before  his 
untimely  death.  Dr.  Lewis  was  the  General  Secretary  of  the  Prison 
Association  of  New  York.  He  brought  to  the  discharge  of  his  duties 
in  that  position  exceptional  qualifications,  the  product  of  unusual 
training.  After  graduation  at  Tufts  College  in  1895,  he  taught  in 
that  institution  for  about  two  years,  earning  the  degree  of  Master 
of  Arts.  For  three  years  afterwards,  he  pursued  his  studies  abroad 
at  the  University  of  Munich  and  at  the  Sorbonne,  in  Paris,  thus 
qualifying  for  the  degree  of  Ph.  D.,  which  was  conferred  upon 
him  by  the  University  of  Pennsylvania  in  1900.  For  the  next  five 
years,  he  was  Professor  of  Modern  Languages  at  the  University 
of  Maine.  In  1905,  he  accepted  appointment  with  the  Charity 
Organization  Society  in  the  City  of  New  York,  and  in  that  position 
he  was  brought  into  direct  contact  with  the  varied  problems  of 
delinquency  and  offenders  against  the  law  and  the  manifold  variety 
of  organized  eleemosynary  and  benevolent  effort  in  the  metropolitan 
region  of  New  York.  In  that  field,  he  acquired  an  experience  which 
peculiarly  fitted  him  for  the  service  of  the  Prison  Association, 
l)y  which  he  was  chosen  General  Secretary  in  1910.  His  services 
in  that  capacity  were  characterized  by  rare  address,  great  devotion, 
intelligent  and  sympathetic  effort.  Under  his  direction,  the  Asso- 
ciation during  that  period  fully  maintained  its  traditions  of  helpf rd 
service  to  the  cause  for  which  it  exists,  and  its  present  high  position 
in  that  field  in  no  small  measure  is  due  to  Dr.  Lewis'  character 
and  labors.  The  Association  feels  that  this  volume  will  constitute 
the  best  lasting  memorial  to  Dr.  Lewis'  life  and  work.  He  was 
<;ut  off  in  the  prime  of  his  life,  and  when  his  capacity  for  intelligent 
labor  was  very  high.  Some  comprehension  of  his  labors  in  the 
£eld  of  penology  may  be  derived  from  a  reading  of  the  ensuing 
pages. 

George  W.  Wickersham, 
Chairman^  Executive  Committee  of  the  Prison 

Association  of  New  York, 


506S1J1 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


Chapter 

I. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 


XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 


XXII. 

XXIII. 

XXIV. 

XXV. 


Page 
Foreword  3 

The  Beginnings  of  American  Prison  Eeform 7 

Planning  a  Prison  System , 16 

The  Walnut  Street  Prison 25 

Early  European  Influences "83 

The  Breakdown 38 

Newgate  Prison  in  New  York 43 

Newgate  of  Connecticut 64 

The  Massachusetts  State  Prison 68 

The  Development  of  the  Auburn  System 77 

The  Early  Years  of  Mount  Pleasant  Prison  (Sing  Sing) 107 

The  Western  and  the  Eastern  Penitentiaries  of  Pennsylvania 118 

The  Early  Development  of  Prison  Labor  in  New  York 130 

Other  Early  Prisons  in  New  England 147 

Maine 

New  Hampshire 

Vermont 

The  Massachusetts  State  Prison 158 

Connecticut  175 

New  Jersey 189 

Maryland  204 

Virginia  210 

The  Eastern  Penitentiary  of  Pennsylvania 217 

Kentucky    253 

Other  Early  American  Prisons 260 

Ohio 

Washington,  D.  C. 
Georgia 
Tennessee 

County  Jails 269 

The  Rev.  Louis  Dwight 289 

The  Early  Juvenile  Reformatories,  1824-1844 293 

The  State  of  Prisons  in  1845 323 

Bibliography 347 


CHAPTER  1 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  AMERICAN   PRISON   REFORM 

The  traveler  who  passes  Ossining,  New  York,  upon  the  train  can 
hardly  fail  to  note  the  gray,  bastile-like  prison  of  Sing  Sing,  loom- 
ing like  a  monolith  beside  the  railroad  track.  Its  many  small 
windows,  that  look  like  loop-holes ;  its  cheerless  granite  walls,  worn 
by  the  elements  during  an  entire  century ;  its  extraordinary  archi- 
tectural construction,  and  its  notorious  history  as  a  place  of  punish- 
ment, all  lead  the  mind  of  the  traveler  to  ponder  upon  the  prison 
as  a  necessary  institution  in  our  American  life. 

But  Sing  Sing  is  passing.  Built  in  1825,  by  1925  it  will  un- 
doubtedly have  been  superseded  by  the  most  modern,  most  humane 
and  most  scientific  institution  for  the  treatment  of  delinquents  yet 
projected  upon  the  North  American  continent.  A  receiving  and 
classification  prison  is  now  under  construction,  upon  the  hill  above 
the  old  prison.  To  this  new  prison  will  come  all  felons  sentenced 
to  the  State  prisons  of  New  York.  From  it  the  newcomers  will  be 
sent,  after  the  most  careful  study  of  their  individual  treatment- 
needs,  to  the  institutions  in  which  they  may  find  the  best  and  most 
permanent  curative  and  reformatory  treatment. 

A  new  day  has  indeed  arrived  in  American  penological  methods. 
Throughout  the  last  half  century,  with  rapidly  increasing  momen- 
tum, corrective  social  agencies  other  than  the  prison  have  developed 
in  the  constant  and  always  necessary  battle  of  society  against 
criDie.  The  reformatory  movement,  typified  by  the  founding  of 
Elmira  Reformatory  in  the  seventies  of  the  nineteenth  century; 
the  development  of  the  so-called  indeterminate  sentence ;  the  growth 
of  the  application  of  parole  after  imprisonment;  the  remarkable 
rise  of  probation,  as  a  form  of  substitute  for  the  prison  term ;  the 
marvellous  spread  of  juvenile  courts;  the  growth  of  farm  prisons 
and  specialized  institutions;  the  organization  of  Big  Brother  and 
Big  Sister  work,  enlisting  the  philanthropic  and  devoted  services 
of  volunteers ;  the  introduction  into  penal  and  reformatory  institu- 
tions of  the  scientific  minds  of  the  psychologist  and  the  psychiatrist, 
whereby  methods  of  treatment  of  inmates  have  become  materially 
changed ;  and  the  nation-wide  attention  given  in  most  recent  years 
to  the  institutional  problems  of  feeblemindedness  and  diminished 
responsibility — all  these  factors  in  so-called  *^ prison  reform'*  have, 
as  it  were,  been  cumulatively  reducing  the  original  functions  and 
methods  of  the  American  prison  to  something  quite  different.  And 
all  of  these  social  efforts  to  humanize,  and  to  make  more  just,  the 
treatment  by  society  of  the  prison  inmate  have  brought  increased 
hope  of  success  into  the  prison  problem. 

But  how  did  the  American  prison  come  to  be  what,  for  a  century, 
it  has  been — a  highly  individual,  unique,  and  not  infrequently 
notorious  institution  ?  What  were  its  chief  origins  ?  Who  played 
a  part  in  devising  this  extraordinary  social  instrument  of  alleged 

171 


^^  •  • .'  :''  ;"".''»<  •'  I?iS'i:o]feY;  OF  American  Prisons 

justice?  How  came  it,  that  there  solidified  in  the  midst  of  our 
American  civilization  this  social  mechanism  of  punishment  that, 
with  few  deviations,  from  type,  rose  in  each  State  of  the  Union 
during  the  early  nineteenth  century,  or  sprang  into  being  shortly 
after  Statehood  was  achieved  ?  Upon  what  models  rose  these  early 
prisons?  From  what  minds,  and  because  of  what  philosophies  of 
justice  and  of  punishment,  came  the  origins  of  American  penal 
institutions  ? 

It  is  exactly  these  origins  that  have  been  largely  veiled  or  hidden 
to  the  student  of  prison  reform.  There  has  been  much  assumption 
on  the  part  of  writers  relative  to  our  earliest  prisons.  The  so-called 
''Auburn"  and  ''Pennsylvania"  prison  systems,  each  springing 
up  in  the  third  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century,  have  been  rather 
generally  assumed  to  be  the  chief  sources  of  our  traditional  prison 
methods.  Exceedingly  little  attention  has  been  given  to  still  ear- 
lier efforts  in  the  first  American  States  to  deal  institutionally  with 
the  problems  of  crime. 

Yet  there  lies  back  there,  beginning  with  the  birth  of  the  Ameri- 
can republic,  and  extending  through  a  period  of  a  half -century,  a 
development  of  penal  philosophies  and  of  accompanying  institu- 
tions that  in  many  respects  is  not  only  of  great  historical  interest, 
but  also  of  highest  significance  in  the  development  of  our  American 
systems  of  dealing  with  offenders.  The  writer  has  been  led  to 
explore  this  region  because  of  the  absence  of  available  material  in 
readily  accessible  form.  The  results  of  this  exploration  he  now 
presents  in  this  volume,  emphasizing  however  with  frankness  that 
this  is  but  an  excursion  into  a  little  known  land,  and  not  a  compre- 
hensive survey  and  charting  of  the  entire  territory. 

There  has  been  a  certain  zest  in  this  pioneering  exploration  of  the 
period  between  1776  and  1845.  If  what  the  writer  may  be  able  to 
present  shall  add  to  and  clarify  our  general  knowledge  of  our 
earlier  prison  methods,  and  explain  much  that  is  still  found  as 
survivals  of  earliest  methods,  the  intermittent  study  of  several 
years  will  be  more  than  repaid. 

The  birth  of  the  American  republic  and  the  birth  of  an  organized 
prison  system  in  this  country  occurred  practically  simultaneously. 
It  was  actually  in  the  first  year  of  American  independence,  1776, 
that  an  early  act  of  the  newly-formed  State  of  Pennsylvania 
provided,  in  its  constitution,  that  the  Legislature 

**  proceed,  as  soon  as  might  be,  to  the  reform  of  the  penal  laws,  and  invent 
punishments  less  sanguinary,  and  better  proportioned  to  the  various  degrees 
of  criminality.' '  ^ 

We  shall  constantly  see  the  relatively  prominent  and  progressive 
position  of  Pennsylvania  in  the  development  of  more  humane  meth- 
ods of  dealing  with  criminals.  The  colonial  period  of  American 
history  had  been  marked  by  the  prevalence  of  corporal  and  of 
capital  punishment.  Even  at  the  time  of  the  emancipation  of  the 
Colonies  from  British  domination,  the  punitive  methods  of  the 
Old  Country  prevailed  in  the  new  world.    A  distinguished  Quaker 

1  Turnbuirs  visit  to  the  Philadelphia  Prison,  p.  8. 


History  of  American  Prisons  9 

philanthropist,  Thomas  Eddy,  living  in  New  York  city  at  the 
period  of  the  beginnings  of  American  independence,  wrote  of  the 
age: 

**The  tears  of  the  sympathetic,  and  the  voice  of  the  benevolent,  had  made 
but  slow  progress  against  the  apathy  of  the  great  mass  of  mankind,  and  the 
vindictive  spirit  of  a  few,  who  believe,  or  profess  to  believe,  that  the  world 
should  be  governed  by  a  rod  of  iron.  The  hearts  of  the  people  were  made 
callous  by  the  sight  of  stocks,- whipping  posts,  pillories  in  every  shire  town  or 
considerable  village.  Flagellation  with  the  cat-o'-nine  tails,  burning  in  the 
hand  or  forehead  with  a  hot  iron,  cropping  the  ears  of  prisoners  in  the  pillory, 
were  all  common  sights  to  the  youngest  as  well  as  the  oldest  portion  of  the 
community.' '  ^ 

The  Colonial  period  of  our  American  history  was  characterized 
by  a  free  employment  of  capital  punishment  for  offenses  that 
to-day  are  followed  by  no  such  treatment.  Even  at  the  close  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  the  English  penal  code  still  retained  the  death 
penalty  for  160  offenses.  And  the  policy  of  England  had  been  to 
superimpose  upon  the  Colonies  her  own  methods  of  punishment. 

Methods  of  punishment,  once  established  and  practiced,  tend  / 
by  their  very  existence  and  continuance  to  justify  themselves. 
When  Thomas  Mott  Osborne  campaigned  at  Auburn  Prison 
in  1913  and  1914  against  ''medieval  prison  methods,"  both  in 
housing  prisoners  and  in  their  daily  routine,  he  was  combatting 
many  traditional  customs  handed  down  by  almost  a  century  of 
practice  from  the  early  ''Auburn  System."  To-day  the  whipping 
post  is  still  used  in  Delaware,  and  its  very  presence  leads  not  only 
to  its  justification  by  a  portion  of  the  population  of  that  State, 
but  gives  opportunity  to  residents  of  other  States  to  argue,  from 
its  presence,  the  necessity  of  severer  punishments  in  their  own 
States. 

Moreover,  tradition  ultimately  often  gives  sanction  to  that  which 
at  first  seemed  unjustified,  or  improper,  or  only  an  emergency 
measure.  Edward  Livingston,  the  noted  American  jurist,  wrote 
that  in  this  manner 

**The  English  nation  have  submitted  to  the  legislation  of  its  courts,  and 
seen  their  fellow  subjects  hanged  for  constructive  felonies;  quartered  for 
constructive  treasons;  and  roasted  alive  for  constructive  heresies,  with  a  pa- 
tience that  would  be  astonishing,  even  if  their  written  laws  had  sanctioned 
the  butchery. ' ' ' 

The  gradual  emancipation  of  the  Colonies,  and  later  of  the  States, 
from  the  sanguinary  and  horrible  tyranny  of  mutilation  of 
offenders,  branding,  ear-cropping,  flogging,  and  the  like,  came  about 
through  the  growing  realization  of  the  leaders  in  social  and  political 
life  of  the  communities  that  the  barbarous  and  debasing  physical 
punishments  failed  to  check  crime  or  solve  the  problems  of  its 
reduction.  If  such  realization  seemed  to  be  of  slow  growth,  one 
has  but  to  contemplate  the  present  reactionary  attitude  toward  the 
treatment  of  the  offender.  Throughout  the  land  there  is  in  this 
year  (1921)  a  marked  trend  toward  far  greater  severity  of  pun- 
ishment for  crime,   and  a  growing  inclination  to   attribute  the 

«  Life  of  Thos.  Eddy,  p.  56. 
•Livingston,  Vol.  1,  p.  13. 


10  History  of  American  Prisons 

failure  to  reduce  crime  to  excessive  leniency  of  judicial  and  institu- 
tional treatment  of  criminals  and  other  offenders.  Throughout  the 
history  of  penal  treatment  we  find  the  pendulum  swinging  from 
extremes  of  opinion,  and  often  of  treatment. 

It  was  recognized  by  William  Bradford,  a  Quaker  of  Philadel- 
phia, who  became  in  1794  the  Attorney  General  of  the  United 
States,  that 

*'on  no  subject  has  government  in  different  parts  of  the  world  discovered  more 
indolence  and  inattention  than  in  the  construction  or  reform  of  the  penal  code. 
Legislators  feel  themselves  elevated  above  the  commission  of  crimes  which  the 
laws  prescribed,  and  they  have  too  little  personal  interest  in  a  system  of 
punishments  to  be  critically  exact  in  retaining  its  severity.  The  degraded 
class  of  men,  who  are  the  victims  of  the  laws,  are  thrown  at  a  distance  that 
obscures  their  sufferings,  and  blunts  the  sensibilities  of  the  legislator.  Hence, 
sanguinary  punishments,  contrived  in  despotic  and  barbarous  ages,  have  been 
continued  when  the  progress  of  science,  freedom  and  morals  renders  them 
unnecessary  and  mischievous ;  and  laws,  the  offspring  of  a  corrupted  monarchy, 
are  fostered  in  the  bosom  of  a  youthful  republic. ' '  ^ 

We  turn  naturally,  not  only  to  the  State  and  earlier  Colony  of 
Pennsylvania,  but  of  course  also  to  William  Penn,  to  discover  early 
enlightened  efforts  to  mitigate  the  severities  of  the  criminal  code, 
and  to  introduce  into  existing  punitive  methods  the  qualities  of 
greater  mercy.  When  William  Penn,  arriving  in  the  Delaware 
River  in  1682  from  England,  with  a  charter  from  Charles  the 
Second,  founded  the  province  of  Pennsylvania,  he  brought  from  the 
British  monarch  permission  to  establish  a  penal  code  of  most  excep- 
tional mildness,  which  retained  the  death  penalty  only  in  cases  of 
homicide,*  and  which  allowed  the  substitution  of  imprisonment  at 
hard  labor  for  former  bloody  punishments. 

William  Bradford  wrote,  a  hundred  years  afterwards,  of  this 
great  forerunner  of  the  Quaker  humanitarianism : 

"The  founder  of  the  province  of  Pennsylvania  was  a  philosopher  whose 
elevated  mind  rose  above  the  errors  and  prejudices  of  his  age,  like  a  mountain, 
whose  summit  is  enlightened  by  the  first  beams  of  the  sun,  while  the  plains  are 
still  covered  with  mists  and  darkness. ' '  "^ 

Penn's  outstanding  purpose  in  the  treatment  of  criminals  and 
offenders  was  clemency  and,  when  possible,  rehabilitation.  He 
had  been  in  prison.  He  had  been  a  martyr.  He  had  endured  six 
months  of  the  promiscuous  horrors  of  Newgate  in  London,  because 
he  had  refused  to  take  an  oath,  which  was  an  act  contrary  to  his 
religious  convictions.  In  a  tour  of  Holland,  he  had  inspected  the 
Dutch  workhouses,  which  even  in  those  earliest  times  in  rational 
institutional  management  were  well-developed  institutions  for  the 
amendment  of  lawbreakers  through  compulsory  labor.  He  became 
deeply  impressed  with  the  industrial  features  of  these  workhouses, 
and  when  he  came  to  America,  he  brought  the  purpose  with  him 
of  substituting  the  prison  for  the  gallows,  labor  for  bloody  punish- 
ments, and  workshops  for  the  idleness  and  debauchery  of  the  jail 
yard  J 

*  Gray,  F.  C.     Prison  Discipline  in  America.     Boston,  1847,  or  Bradford,  p.  16. 

»  Bradford,  p.  14. 

•Bradford,  p.  5.  ^  ^  ,  ,r  ,    ..  no 

'Krohne.     Geschichte  des  Gefangniawesens,  Vol.  1,  p.  92. 


History  of  American  Prisons  11 

The  temptation  of  the  student  of  prison  history  is,  constantly,  to 
contrast  the  dim  past  with  the  vivid  present.  To-day,  in  the  length 
and  breadth  of  our  land,  idleness,  promiscuity,  and  individual 
demoralization  of  the  individual  are  salient  characteristics  of  the 
county  jails  of  the  United  States.  Over  two  hundred  years  after 
Penn,  we  still  fight  for  workshops,  and  compulsory  labor,  and  the 
abolition  of  the  herding  of  human  beings  in  our  jails  and  local 
places  of  correction.  Penn's  penal  philosophy  is  applicable  to-day 
— and  he  towers  in  history  as  one  of  the  great  reformers  in  the  penal 
field — one  whose  work  soon  was  dissipated  in  the  sands  of  inertia, 
reaction  and  traditional  adherence  to  man's  penal  inhumanity  to 
man. 

Yet,  at  the  time,  despite  the  policy  of  Great  Britain  to  keep  the 
laws  of  the  Colonies  in  unison  with  the  Mother  Country's  laws, 
and  to  overwhelm  an  infant  country  with  a  mass  of  sanguinary 
laws,  Penn,  in  his  Frame  of  Government,  abolished  tortures  and 
bloody  punishments,  and  substituted  therefor  the  penalties  of  im- 
prisonment at  hard  labor,  stripes  (i.  e.,  flogging),  fines  and  for- 
feitures.   As  Bradford  put  it,  his  penal  code  was  brief  but  complete, 

**  animated  by  the  pure  spirit  of  philanthropy.  Punishments  were  calculated 
to  tie  up  the  hands  of  the  criminal,  to  reform,  to  repair  the  wrongs  of  the 
injured  party,  and  to  hold  up  an  object  to  terror  sufficient  to  check  a  people.'" 

A  reform  is  to  be  judged,  of  course,  not  by  what  to-day  would 
be  considered  adequate  as  the  substitute  for  an  evil,  but  in  the 
light  of  its  relative  progressiveness  as  a  substitute  for  existing 
conditions,  in  an  existing  state  of  public  opinion  and  of  prevailing 
customs.  William  Penn  substituted  for  extreme  penalties  physical 
punishments  that  to-day  would  be  turned  from  in  horror  by  the 
most  enlightened  minds.  With  the  purpose  of  modifying  so  far 
as  possible  the  vindictive  and  retaliatory  features  of  then  existing 
laws,  punitive  measures  were  to  be  employed  for  the  reformation 
of  the  offender,  and  not  for  his  extermination.  Reparation  of 
wrongs  was  instituted  in  favor  of  the  injured  party,  and  a  chief 
object  of  his  code  was  the  deterrence  from  crime  of  those  who 
might  be  tempted,  in  the  absence  of  severe  treatment,  to  commit 
crime. 

To  cite  several  specific  illustrations :  He  provided  that  all  pris- 
oners should  be  bailable  on  sufficient  securities,  thus  enabling  the 
miserable  offender,  when  possible,  to  avoid  the  long  and  debauching 
imprisonment,  prior  to  trial,  in  the  local  jail  or  institution.  An 
exception  to  admission  to  bail  was  such  a  capital  crime  as  seemed 
to  bear  its  own  evident  proof,  or  in  which  the  presumption  was 
great.  To  prevent  false  imprisonment,  all  persons  wrongfully 
imprisoned  or  prosecuted  at  law  were  to  recover  double  damages 
against  the  informer  or  prosecutor.  All  prisons  were  to  be  free  as 
to  fees,  food  and  lodging,  thus  eliminating  the  extortion  of  jailers.* 
To  make  crime  still  more  unattractive,  all  lands  and  goods  of  felons 
should  be  liable  to  make  satisfaction  to  the  parties  wronged,  to 

•Bradford,  p.  15. 

•  Carson,  H.  L.     "  Wm.  Penn  as  a  Lawgiver."     Pa.  Mag.  of  Hist,  and  Biography, 
Vol.  30. 


12  History  of  American  Prisons 

the  limit  of  twice  the  value;  and  for  want  of  lands  or  goods,  the 
felons  should  be  bondmen,  to  work  in  the  common  prison  or  work- 
house until  the  injured  party  was  satisfied. 

These  features  were  substantially  enacted  in  the  Great  Law 
of  Pennsylvania  in  1682.^^  Penn  provided  also  for  a  new  institution 
that  was  to  supersede  in  large  measure  the  public  summary  punish- 
ments of  the  past,  namely,  the  stocks,  the  pillory,  the  branding 
iron,  and  the  gallows.    In  short,  the  counties  were  each  to 

''build  a  sufficient  house,  at  least  twenty  feet  square,  for  restraint,  correction, 
labor  and  punishment  of  all  such  persons  as  shall  be  thereunto  committed  by 
law. ' ' " 

The  basic  purpose  of  these  new  institutions  was  that  law-breakers 
should  be  made  to  work,  and  to  learn  the  habits  of  labor. 

In  Penn's  project  of  his  code  of  laws,  it  was  expressly  declared 
that  *'all  prisons  shall  be  workhouses  for  felons,  vagrants,  and 
loose  and  idle  persons. ' '  The  Great  Law  of  1682  contained  a  similar 
provision,  the  stock,  according  to  George  W.  Smith  in  1829,  upon 
which  all  subsequent  legislation  in  Pennsylvania  was  grafted.  From 
the  year  1682  to  1717,  labor  formed  an  invariable  part  of  the 
punishments  of  those  sentenced  to  the  prisons  of  Pennsylvania.^^ 

In  our  present  day,  much  stress  is  laid  upon  ''prevention"  as 
the  most  constructive  method  of  checking  and  reducing  delinquency. 
We  emphasize  the  far-reaching  influences  of  the  church,  the  school 
and  the  home  as  prime  factors  in  maintaining  good  conduct  among 
the  young.  We  advocate  the  establishment  and  support  of  boys' 
clubs,  girls'  clubs,  social  centers,  the  Scout  movement,  settlements, 
and  the  like.  We  repeat  the  old  adage  that  an  ounce  of  prevention 
is  worth  a  pound  of  cure  in  the  treatment  of  crime.  But  Penn's 
mind,  over  two  centuries  ago,  had  traveled  also  along  the  practical 
road  of  prevention.  He  aimed  by  law  to  provide  for  the  prevention 
of  crime  among  the  young,  by  making  it  mandatory  that  all  chil- 
dren of  the  age  of  twelve  years  should  be  taught  some  useful  trade 
or  skill, 

*  *  to  the  end  that  none  might  be  idle,  but  that  the  poor  might  work  to  live,  and 
that  the  rich,  if  they  became  poor,  might  not  want. ' ' 

And,  in  order  that  the  citizens  of  Pennsylvania  while  still  young 
might  learn  the  laws,  it  was  provided  that  the  laws  should  be  studied 
as  a  text-book  in  the  common  schools. 

However,  the  principles  underlying  Penn's  effort  for  the  trans- 
formation of  the  penal  practice  of  the  time  were  much  too  far  in 
advance  of  their  time  to  receive  the  sanction  of  Queen  Anne,  who 
succeeded  Charles  the  Second.^^  The  laws  were  repealed  by  the 
Queen  in  council,  only  to  be  re-enacted  by  the  Province  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, where  they  continued  in  force  until  the  death  of  Penn  in 
1718.  It  was  written  that  during  this  period  of  thirty-five  years,  it 
did  not  appear  that  Pennsylvania  was  the  theatre  of  more  atrocious 
crimes  than  other  Colonies.^^ 


10  Charter  to  Wm.  Penn,  and  Laws  of  Prov.  of  Pa.,  p.  100. 

11  Charter  to  Wm.  Penn,  p.  1139.       ^  „,    ^  ,.     ^  ,^     ^  .   . 

12  Geo    W.  Smith,  in  R.  Vaux.     Brief  Sketch  of  the  Ongms,  etc.,  p.  28. 
isVaux.     Roberts'  Notices,  etc.     Phila.,  1826. 

"Bradford,  p.  16. 


History  of  American  Prisons  13 

The  sanguinary  laws,  restored  in  1718,  continued  in  force  until 
the  period  of  the  American  Revolution.^^  During  this  time  the 
following  offenses  were  again  capital  crimes : 

High  treason;  petty  treason;  murder;  burglary;  rape;  sodomy;  buggery; 
malicious  maiming;  manslaughter  by  stabbing;  witchcraft  by  conjuration; 
arson; 

and  every  other  felony  was  made  capital  in  the  case  of  a  second 
conviction.^®  Later,  there  was  added  counterfeiting.  All  these 
crimes,  with  the  possible  exception  of  witchcraft,  were  capital  at 
the  time  of  the  Revolution.^* 

We  come  to  the  first  year  of  American  independence,  1776.  It 
was  in  this  year  that  in  Philadelphia  the  first  prison  reform  society 
of  America  or  Europe^^  was  founded — ^the  ''Philadelphia  Society 
for  Assisting  Distressed  Prisoners. ' '  The  name  of  the  organization 
was  significant.  Emphasis  was  laid  upon  the  succoring  of  the 
unfortunates  in  prison.  The  society  was  the  result  of  private  initia- 
tive. The  membership  was  small,  and  the  life  of  the  society  was 
extremely  brief,  for  after  some  nineteen  months  the  British  entered 
Philadelphia,  and  took  possession,  among  other  things,  of  the  local 
jail.^^ 

However,  after  the  Revolution,  the  society  was  revived  on  May 
8th,  1787,  at  the  German  Schoolhouse  on  Cherry  street,  by  the 
surviving  members  of  the  first  society.  It  was  now  called  ''The 
Philadelphia  Society  for  Alleviating  the  Miseries  of  Public  Pris- 
ons. "  "  As  the  Pennsylvania  Prison  Society  this  society  still  exists, 
and  plays  an  influential  role  in  the  prison  reform  field  of  Pennsyl- 
vania. Its  last  annual  meeting  was  the  one  hundred  and  thirty- 
third. 

The  new  title  of  the  reorganized  society  of  1787  indicated  that 
the  attention  of  the  members  was  now  to  be  directed  in  greater 
measure  toward  the  miserable  physical  and  social  conditions  of 
the  public  jails.  The  principal  duties  of  the  society  were,  to  visit 
the  public  prisons  at  least  once  every  week,  through  members  of  its 
managing  committee;  to  inquire  into  the  circumstances  of  persons 
confined  therein ;  to  report  abuses  discovered,  and  to  examine  into 
the  influence  of  confinement  or  punishment  upon  the  morals  of 
society.^^ 

The  purposes  of  the  newly-formed  society  were,  according  to 
Caleb  Lownes,  somewhat  different.  Founded  mainly  because  of 
the  gross  excesses  arising  from  the  employment  of  prisoners  from 
the  jail  at  labor  upon  the  public  streets — which  we  shall  shortly 
describe — the  new  society  appointed  a  committee  of  six  members 

i*Vaux,  p.  7.     Notices. 

"  Smith,  G.  W.     "  Defense  of  the  Pa.  System  of  Solitary  Confinement."     Quoted 
by  Vaux,  Richard,  in  "  Origin  and  History,"  etc.,  p.  29. 
"Vaux,  p.  8ff. 
«  Bradford,  p.  19. 

i»  Julius.     "  Sittleche  Zusbaende,  Vol.  II,  p.  122. 
»  Bradford,  p.  16. 
21  Vaux,  pp.  8ff. 


14  History  of  American  Prisons 

to  visit  the  prison,  to  furnish  bread  when  necessary,  clothe  the 
naked,  accommodate  differences,  discharge  those  confined  for  small 
debts,  and  generally  to  mitigate  the  sufferings  of  prisoners. 

We  should,  at  this  point,  pause  to  recognize  clearly  the  remark- 
able and  ever-active  interest  and  work  of  the  Society  of  Friends,, 
commonly  called  Quakers,  in  prison  reform.  It  would  have  been 
a  far  different  and  more  backward  America,  penologically,  had  it 
not  been  for  the  activity  and  initiative  of  the  Quakers.  '  Theirs^ 
was  the  great  service  of  devising,  in  large  measure,  the  first  Ameri- 
can State  prison,  on  Walnut  street,  which  we  shall  shortly  describe. 
Theirs  was  the  leavening  philanthropic  influence  in  Pennsylvania 
during  the  period  under  discussion.  And,  indeed,  theirs  is  still, 
in  1921,  a  persistent,  sober,  constructive  interest  and  activity  in 
penological  matters.  To  early  prisons  they  contributed  wardens^ 
of  high  integrity.  They  philosophized  upon  the  criminological 
problems  of  the  day.  They  conditioned  in  large  measure,  not  as^ 
a  sect,  but  as  individuals,  the  development  of  the  earlier  American 
prisons,  and  their  daily  routine. 

Particularly  in  Pennsylvania  and  in  New  York  were  the  Quakers 
persistent  in  efforts  to  abolish  the  death  penalty  and  sanguinary 
punishments,  to  improve  the  conditions  of  prisons,  and,  wherever 
possible,  to  achieve  the  reformation  of  the  inmate.  We  cite  at  this 
point  the  noteworthy  description  by  Edward  Livingston  (1822) 
of  the  participation  of  the  Quakers  in  public  affairs: 

**  Happily  for  Pennsylvania,  and  perhaps  for  the  world,  she  had  enlightened 
men  to  frame  her  penal  laws;  and  happier  still,  she  had  a  class  of  citizens 
admirably  calculated  to  execute  them  with  the  zeal  of  enthusiasm. 

^The  founder  of  that  State,  and  his  first  associates,  belonged  to  a  sect 
which  fitted  them,  by  its  principles,  and  by  the  habits  and  pursuits  which  it 
created  and  prescribed,  to  be  the  agents  of  a  reform  in  jurisprudence  similar 
to  that  which  they  adopted,  and  perhaps  carried  to  excess,  in  religion.  Their 
descendents,  with  less  of  that  enthusiasm  which  in  their  ancestors  was  exalted 
by  persecution,  had  all  the  active  benevolence  and  Christian  charity  necessary 
to  prompt,  and  the  perseverance  and  unwearied  industry  to  support,  their 
exertions. 

''Abstracted  by  their  tenets  from  the  pleasures  which  occupy  so  large  a 
portion  of  life  among  other  sects;  equally  excluded  from  other  pursuits  in 
which  so  many  find  occupation;  freed  from  the  vexations  of  mutual  litigation 
by  submitting  every  difference  to  the  umpirage  of  the  elders,  and  from  the 
tyranny  of  fashion  by  an  independent  contempt  for  its  rules,  the  modern 
Quakers  devote  all  the  time  which  others  waste  in  dissipation,  or  employ  in 
intriguing  for  public  employment,  to  the  direction  of  charitable  institutions, 
and  that  surplus  wealth  which  others  dissipate  in  frivolous  pursuits,  to  the 
cause  of  humanity. 

''In  every  society  for  promoting  education,  for  instructing  or  supporting 
the  poor,  for  relieving  the  distresses  of  prisoners,  for  suppressing  vice  and 
immorality,  they  are  active  and  zealous  members;  and  they  indemnify  them- 
selves for  the  loss  of  the  honors  and  the  pleasures  of  the  world  by  the  highest 
of  all  honors,  the  purest  of  all  pleasures,  that  of  doing  good. ' '  '^ 

The  Quakers  held  that  the  prevention  of  crime  was  the  sole  end 
of  punishment,  a  most  advanced  attitude  for  the  time.  They  held 
further  that  every  punishment  that  was  not  absolutely  necessary  to- 

23  Works  of  Edward  Livingston,  Vol.  I.  p,  508 


History  of  American  Prisons  15 

that  end  was  a  cruel  and  tyrannical  act.  Every  penalty  should  be 
apportioned  to  the  offense.^^  Punishment  should  not  be  such  as  to 
plunge  the  criminal  still  deeper  into  destruction.  The  prison  should 
make  better  instead  of  worse. 

With  these  extremely  advanced  penological  idejas,  the  Quakers, 
strongly  represented  in  the  newly-formed  prison  reform  society  of 
Philadelphia,  faced  the  practical  problem  of  bettering  the  condi- 
tions of  public  prisoners,  and  of  establishing  a  humane  and  reason- 
able system  of  prison  treatment. 

»  Bradford,  p.  3. 


CHAPTER  II 


PLANNING  A  PRISON  SYSTEM 

In  1786,  the  Pennsylvania  Legislature,  influenced  largely  by  the 
penal  principles  of  the  Quakers,  reduced  materially  once  more  the 
extent  of  the  application  of  the  death  penalty,  reserving  now  the 
infliction  of  capital  punishment  only  for  treason,  murder,  rape 
and  arson,^  while  other  offenses  were  to  be  punished  by  whipping, 
imprisonment,  and  by  hard  labor  in  public. 

If,  now,  the  gallows  were  to  be  less  frequently  used,  what  should 
take  the  gallows'  place?  Thus  was  the  practical  problem  of  a 
suitable  place  and  mode  of  imprisonment  forced  upon  the  advocates 
of  a  more  lenient  treatment  of  criminals.  The  Quakers  were  thus 
obligated  to  devise  a  prison  system,  or  "prison  discipline,"  as  it 
was  more  commonly  called. 

They  faced  a  situation  almost  without  precedents.  The  influence 
of  the  great  English  prison  investigator  and  reformer,  John  How- 
ard, was  but  beginning  to  reach  across  the  Atlantic.  There  were 
no  prison  structures  in  other  States  that  might  serve  as  examples 
to  imitate,  or  to  copy  in  part.  To  be  sure,  jails  had  long  existed 
in  the  American  Colonies,  because  there  had  to  be  places  in  which 
to  lock  people  up,  but  they  were  local  institutions,  used  in  general 
either  for  brief  detention  or  for  short  terms  of  imprisonment.  Ob- 
viously, so  long  as  physical  punishments  in  the  open,  before  the 
public,  were  common  forms  of  penalty,  or  so  long  as  the  execution 
of  the  criminal  was  frequent,  or  at  least  provided  in  the  laws  with 
frequency,  the  use  of  the  prison  as  a  place  of  permanent  punish- 
ment, or  of  actual  reformation,  was  hardly  in  the  contemplation 
of  the  people.  And  the  jails  were,  moreover,  the  centers  of  pro- 
miscuous herding  of  prisoners  of  all  descriptions. 

The  Quakers  were  confronted  with  just  such  a  condition,  in 
the  existence  of  the  old  jail  at  the  corner  of  Third  and  High  streets. 
This  prison  was  all  that  Howard  could  have  described  or  Hogarth 
depicted.  It  was  the  *' scene  of  promiscuous  and  unrestricted  inter- 
course, and  of  universal  riot  and  debauchery. "  ^  There  was  no 
separation  of  prisoners  by  sex.  Keepers  locked  up  the  male  and 
female  prisoners  in  the  same  rooms  at  night.  When  the  Philadel- 
phia Society  had  successfully  memorialized  the  Legislature,  and 
that  body  had  enacted  a  law  for  the  separation  of  sexes  in  this  jail, 
the  number  of  female  prisoners  soon  averaged  four  or  five,  instead 
of  between  thirty  and  forty.® 

This  Philadelphia  jail  was  a  typical  catch-all  of  miserable  persons, 
criminals,  lesser  offenders,  debtors  and  others.  In  this  building, 
the  young  and  old,  the  white  and  the  colored,  the  depraved  and 

1  Gray.     Prison  Discp.  in  America. 
aVaux,  p.  8ff. 
8  Vaux,  p.  24. 

[16] 


History  of  American  Prisons  17 

the  relatively  innocent  were  indiscriminately  herded.  Liquor  was 
freely  sold  at  a  bar,  kept  by  one  of  the  prison  officers.  Jail  fees 
were  required  even  of  those  who  had  been  tried  and  acquitted. 
From  the  windows  of  the  jail  the  inmates  were  wont  to  push  out 
bags  and  baskets,  imploring  alms  from  the  passers-by,  and  roundly 
reviling  them  if  they  refused  to  give.*  The  prison  was  of  the  kind 
that  Penn,  a  century  earlier,  had  sought  to  supplant  by  his  pro- 
vision of  county  workhouses. 

The  first  individual,  unconnected  with  the  administration  of  the 
criminal  laws,  who  appears  to  have  given  attention  to  the  inhabit- 
ants of  the  jail,  was  Richard  Wistar,  who  died  in  1781  at  the  age 
of  54,  and  who  lived  in  that  neighborhood.  Before  the  Revolution 
he  was  in  the  habit  of  causing  wholesome  soup,  prepared  in  his  own 
dwelling,  to  be  distributed  among  the  prisoners.^ 

One  of  the  oldest  of  the  evils  of  the  prison  was,  according  to 
Caleb  Lownes,  the  gaol  fees.  **  Guilty  or  innocent,  able  or  unable, 
strip  or  pay,  was  the  first  salutation." 

An  effort  to  remedy  conditions  by  a  form  of  compulsory  labor 
was  attempted  by  the  Legislature  of  1786.  The  employment  of 
prisoners  upon  the  public  roads  of  the  city  of  Philadelphia  was 
made  mandatory.  The  prisoners  should  meet  the  expenses  of  their 
keep  through  their  labor. 

That  prisoners  can  be  employed  on  roads,  and  in  general  in  the 
open  air,  outside  the  limits  of  prisons,  is  in  the  year  1921  an  estab- 
lished fact,  so  fully  accepted  to-day  as  to  be  no  longer  debatable. 
In  gangs  and  squads,  without  the  wearing  of  stripes,  and  often 
actually  without  guards,  such  squads  of  prisoners  can  be  found 
in  many  parts  of  the  United  States.  Road  work  in  northern  States 
is  often  regarded  by  the  prisoners  as  a  great  privilege,  in  com- 
parison with  work  within  the  institution,  and  ** honor  camps"  are 
frequently  filled  with  convicts  who  thus  labor,  generally  in  full  view 
of  the  passers-by. 

Yet  this  condition  has  been  arrived  at  only  gradually,  and  after 
many  trials.  This  early  experiment  on  the  roads  of  Philadelphia 
bore  deplorable  results.  The  public  of  the  period  1786  to  1790, 
feared  these  malefactors,  thus  employed  in  public  places,  and  the 
jail  authorities,  on  their  side,  feared  that  the  convicts  would  escape. 
Consequently,  the  prisoners  thus  working  were  weighted  down  with 
iron  collars  and  chains,  and  they  dragged  these  clankingly  as  they 
worked.^  They  were  garbed  in  an  ' '  infamous  dress, ' '  ^  and  their 
heads  were  shaved,  that  they  might  be  easily  indentified  if  they 
should  run  away.  In  short,  they  were  public  exhibitions  of  a  wild 
human  animal,  called  a  convict,  restrained  by  chains  and  arms 
in  the  hands  of  the  guards  from  escaping  to  prey  further  upon 
society. 

The  picture  is  of  intense  interest  in  comparison  with  present 
road-work  methods  in  convict  camps.  To-day  the  prisoners  labor, 
in  northern  States,  without  ball  and  chain.     They  enjoy  unre- 

*  Gray.     Prison  Discp.  in  America. 
"Vaux,  p.  8. 
'  Crawford. 
8  Vaux,  p.  21. 


18  History  of  American  Prisons 

strict ed  freedom  of  motion.  The  stripes  are  almost  entirely  gone 
in  northern  States.  There  is  no  ''infamous  dress,"  but  a  gray- 
uniform  of  unobjectionable  pattern  and  hue.  The  workers  from 
the  prison  are  not  thus  designated  as  pariahs  and  outcasts,  and 
one  of  the  strong  temptations  to  escape  —  namely,  the  avoidance 
of  such  pitiless  pillorying  in  conspicuous  places  before  the  eye  of 
the  public  —  has  been  done  away  with.  In  southern  States  the 
chain  and  the  striped  suit  are  still  more  or  less  customary. 

In  the  Philadelphia  of  1786-1790,  the  results  were  inevitable. 
"The  drunkenness,  profanity  and  indecencies  of  the  prisoners  on 
the  streets  were  in  the  minds  of  almost  all  of  the  citizens,"  wrote 
Caleb  Lownes,  one  of  the  leading  Quaker  prison  reformers  of  the 
period.*    And,  said  Lownes : 

"The  number  of  criminals  increased  to  such  a  degree  as  to  alarm  the  com- 
munity with  fears.  The  keepers  (on  the  streets)  were  armed  with  swords, 
blunderbusses  and  other  weapons  of  destruction.  The  prisoners  were  secured 
by  iron  collars,  and  chains,  fixed  to  bombshells  .  .  .  The  old  and  hard- 
ened offenders  were  daily  in  the  practice  of  begging  and  insulting  the 
inhabitants,  collecting  crowds  of  idle  boys,  and  holding  with  them  the  most 
indecent  and  improper  conversations."" 

It  is  often  asked  why  a  method  that,  when  tried  at  one  time, 
proves  successful,  could  not  have  been  tried  and  used  successfully 
long  before.  Road-w^ork  is  a  case  in  point.  To-day,  the  general 
attitude  of  the  public  is  to  give  the  prisoner  a  "square  deal"  and 
another  chance  prepares,  so  to  speak,  an  environment  for  his  work 
that  is  favorable.  To-day,  also,  the  use  of  the  indeterminate  sen- 
tence makes  good  work  and  good  behavior  an  inducement  to  the 
parole  board  to  lessen  the  period  of  imprisonment.  Honor  systems 
have  instituted  a  sense  of  responsibility  among  prisoners  who  enjoy 
the  greater  privileges  of  that  system.  Neighborhoods  in  which 
prisoners  work  on  roads  have  discovered  the  "humanness"  of 
prisoners.  The  idea  of  the  innate  or  irremediable  depravity  of  the 
convict  is  passing  away.  In  short,  both  prison  and  public  to-day 
give  the  prisoner  a  chance  to  make  good. 

The  attitude  of  the  Philadelphia  public  was  an  admixture  of 
terror,  of  belief  in  the  total  depravity  of  the  convict,  and  of  con- 
viction that  he  had  few  or  no  common  characteristics  with  the 
"good,"  that  is,  those  not  in  prison.  As  we  shall  see  later,  the 
line  of  cleavage  between  the  good  and  the  bad  was  sharp,  and  the 
jail  or  prison  was  one  of  the  most  vivid  symbols  of  the  great  "bad- 
ness" of  the  people  imprisoned  therein.  The  old  prison  above  cited 
in  Philadelphia  was  an  example  of  this  public  attitude  of  mind.  A 
clergyman,  William  Rogers,  announced  in  this  period  that  he  in- 
tended upon  a  certain  Sunday  to  hold  a  divine  service  for  all  the 
prisoners.  The  jailer,  fearful  of  the  loss  of  some  of  his  perquisites 
and  "vested  interests,"  should  the  conditions  within  the  jail  be- 
i?ome  too  publicly  known,  claimed  the  danger  to  the  minister  to 
be  such  that  on  the  appointed  Sabbath  the  jailer  introduced  a 

•Account  ef  Alterations  and  Present  State  of  the  Penal  Laws  of  Pa.,  etc,  Phila., 
»  Lownes.     Acct.  of  Alterations,  etc.,  p.  84. 
17S3. 


History  of  American  Prisons  19 

cannon  into  the  jail,  which  he  installed  in  front  of  the  pulpit, 
pointing  it  at  the  herded  convicts,  and  stationed  beside  it  a  man 
with  a  lighted  torch,  so  that  at  the  first  sign  of  outbreak  among  the 
prisoners  they  might  be  shot  down.^° 

But  the  service  went  on  to  completion,  nevertheless.  It  is  said 
that  this  service  was  the  first  that  had  ever  been  held  before  all 
the  prisoners  in  Philadelphia  at  one  time.^^'  ^^ 

We  turn  now  to  an  incident  that  will  be  recognized  by  the  student 
of  penology  and  criminology  in  this  country  as  little  short  of 
amazing.  There  are  in  the  biological  field  what  are  called  ' '  sports,  * ' 
or  unexpected  deviations  from  type,  occurring  not  in  systematic 
sequence,  or  in  frequent  succession,  but  intermittently,  and  appar- 
ently unrelated  to  what  has  gone  before. 

There  occurred,  in  an  address  given  by  Dr.  Benjamin  Rush  of 
Philadelphia,  at  the  home  of  Benjamin  Franklin  in  that  city  in 
March,  1787,  a  ''sport"  among  theories  of  penal  administration. 
We  present  here  the  theories  of  Dr.  Rush  at  some  length,  because 
in  many  ways  his  suggested  system  of  prison  administration  echoed 
in  that  far-off  time  many  of  the  principles  that  even  to-day  are 
considered  advanced  in  the  penological  field.  And,  so  far  as  the 
writer  has  been  able  to  discern,  there  were  no  clear  results  from 
Dr.  Rush's  paper,  nor  did  the  eminent  physician  in  later  life  take 
a  specially  active  part  in  penal  philanthropy. 

Doctor  Rush  presented  a  lengthy  paper  upon  the  effects  of  public 
punishments  upon  criminals  and  upon  society.  In  his  opinion, 
as  we  summarize  it  from  his  article,  buried  in  a  series  of  miscel- 
laneous papers  on  subjects  other  than  prisons,  the  design  of  the 
punishment  of  criminals  was  threefold: 

1.  To  reform  the  person  who  suffers  punishment. 

2.  To  prevent  the  perpetration  of  crimes,  by  exciting  terror  in  the  minds 
of  spectators. 

3.  To  remove  those  persons  from  society  who  have  manifested  by  their 
tempers  and  crimes,  that  they  are  unfit  to  live  in  society. 

In  short,  Doctor  Rush  has  expressed  practically  the  penological 
program  of  the  present  day,  for  he  maintained  that  the  prison  must 
serve  three  purposes :  Reformation,  the  deterrence  of  others  from 
crime,  and  the  protection  of  society  from  crime. 

We  are  accustomed  to  regard  the  principle  of  ''reformation'*  as 
a  modern  matter  —  one,  say,  of  the  last  half  century,  since  the 
establishment  of  the  so-called  State  reformatories,  beginning  with 
the  New  York  State  Reformatory  at  Elmira,  which  opened  in  1876. 
In  the  popular  mind,  the  prisons,  through  the  first  century  since 
1776  to  1876  —  exactly  a  hundred  years  from  the  first  prison  society 
in  Philadelphia  to  the  opening  of  Elmira  —  were  places  of  strict 
and  forbidding  deterrence  and  punishment.  The  "reformatories" 
were  founded,  that  the  younger  prisoners  in  State  prisons  might  be 
transferred,  or  from  that  time  on  committed,  to  correctional  institu- 
tions primarily  reformative  and  educational  in  their  scope  and 

10  Rochefoucauld-Liancourt. 
"  Vaux,  p.  8ff. 

"  The  death  of  the  author  is  responsible  for  the  absence  of  a  statement  on  the 
repeal  of  the  Law  of  1790. 


20  History  of  American  Prisons 

purpose.  The  very  term  ''reformatories"  has  set  the  prisons  apart 
in  the  popular  mind,  and  even  to-day,  when  honor  systems  and 
self-government,  as  well  as  extended  systems  of  education,  are  found 
in  many  a  prison,  it  still  devolves  upon  the  prison  to  emphasize  the 
fact  that  its  purpose  is  not  primarily  repressive  and  punitive,  but 
curative  and  reformatory,  in  so  far  as  these  results  can  be  achieved. 
Doctor  Rush  wished  to  deter  from  crime  by  exciting  terror  of  the 
prison  in  the  minds  of  the  spectators.  Throughout  the  following 
century  we  shall  find  this  purpose  uppermost,  even  in  the  minds 
of  those  who  sought  reformation  in  the  criminal's  heart.  It  was 
generally  accepted  as  sound  penology,  in  the  early  days,  that  ter- 
rorism within  the  institution  would  accomplish  good  ends.  We 
shall  see  clearly  manifested,  somewhat  later  in  our  study,  that 
''reformation"  among  the  earlier  philanthropists  connoted  much 
more  than  at  present  the  actual  saving  of  the  criminal's  soul. 
Therefore,  with  so  mighty  a  stake,  those  effects  must  be  employed 
that  would  be  most  striking,  impressive  and  potent.  In  an  age 
when  even  the  infliction  of  capital  punishment  for  over  a  dozen 
crimes  seemed  fruitless,  it  was  not  unnatural  that  the  substitute 
therefor,  the  prison,  should  shape  itself  in  the  minds  of  the  theorists 
as  a  place  where  most  forbidding  influences  and  methods  must 
prevail. 
/  Yet  Doctor  Rush,  in  his  article,  held  that  all  public  punishments 
^  —  that  is,  punishments  in  the  open,  before  the  eyes  of  the  onlookers, 

—  tended  to  make  bad  men  worse,  and  to  increase  crimes,  by  the 
noxious  influences  of  such  punishments  upon  society.  At  this  time, 
1787,  the  working  of  the  prisoners  publicly  upon  the  roads  of  Phila- 
delphia must  have  been  in  the  minds  of  all.  Moreover,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  instruments  of  public  punishments,  which  we  have  referred 
to  in  our  first  chapter,  were  a  frequent  sight.  Public  punishments, 
maintained  the  young  surgeon,  destroyed  the  sense  of  shame  in 
those  punished,  and  made  them  hard.  Of  relatively  short  duration, 
publicity  of  punishment  produced  no  permanent  changes  in  the 

'  j  sufferers.  And  when  a  man  had  been  thus  humiliated,  he  had  noth- 
/  ing  more  to  lose,  and  would,  in  Doctor  Rush's  opinion,  be  driven 
i       toward  repeated  crime. 

A  century  and  a  half  of  penal  administration  has  seemingly 
proved  the  soundness  of  the  then  exceedingly  radical  views  of 
Doctor  Rush.  To-day  the  whipping  post  survives  only  in  Delaware. 
Corporal  punishment  in  prison  administration  is  forbidden  by 
the  laws  of  most  States.  Stripes  have  passed,  as  we  have  seen,  in 
most  Northern  prisons.  Brutality  has  yielded  to  deprivations  of 
privileges,  and  to  moral  suasion.  And  in  Delaware  itself,  where 
the  court  sentences  to  prison,  and  often  lays  an  additional  penalty 
of  so  and  so  many  lashes  at  the  whipping  post,  located  at  the  prison 

—  the  Newcastle  County  Workhouse  in  Wilmington  —  the  warden 
of  the  prison  lays  on  the  lashes  in  such  fashion  as  at  least  not 
grievously  to  pain  the  man  at  the  post. 

Moreover,  according  to  Doctor  Rush,  the  fortitude  and  pseudo- 
martyrdom  produced  in  the  criminal  by  public  punishments  stif- 
fened the  resistance  of  criminals  to  the  law.    And  so,  in  time,  these 


History  of  American  Prisons  21 

public  punishments  produced  a  moral  and  mental  insensibility  to 
punishment.  Upon  the  spectator,  also,  the  effects  were  bad,  because 
distress  thus  publicly  and  repeatedly  seen  —  whether  in  the  public 
employment  of  prisoners,  or  in  the  stocks,  or  the  pillory,  or  in 
more  brutal  forms  —  worked  in  the  spectator  an  increasing  indif- 
ference to  the  sufferings  of  others,  and  an  increased  familiarity 
with  the  brutality  of  the  law.  The  young  and  the  innocent  were 
hardened,  and  became  acquainted  with  spectacles  of  human  crim- 
inality that  would  have  been  spared  most  of  them  during  their 
entire  lives,  had  the  punishments  been  private.  But,  maintained 
Doctor  Rush,  sympathy  and  pity  ought  to  stir  the  minds  and  hearts 
of  citizens  for  those  steeped  in  crime,  instead  of  the  indignation 
and  contempt  toward  the  criminals  that  were  engendered  by  such 
public  exhibitions. 

One  has,  in  our  own  century,  but  to  read  the  papers  to  discover 
the  false  heroism  and  pseudo-martyrdom  attending  punishments 
that,  although  within  prison  walls,  as  in  the  case  of  executions, 
are  nevertheless  more  public  in  many  ways  than  were  ever  the 
public  punishments  of  the  era  of  Doctor  Rush.  Where,  at  that  time, 
hundreds  may  have  seen  the  flogging,  or  thousands  the  execution, 
to-day  millions  read,  in  the  State  of  New  York  for  instance,  of 
the  last  moments  of  the  newest  victim  of  the  chair.  When  the 
four  gunmen  were  executed,  several  years  ago,  for  the  murder  of 
Herman  Rosenthal,  the  entire  State  of  New  York  was  given  columns 
of  minutest  details  of  the  preparations  for  the  execution,  and  the 
execution  itself,  and  the  subsequent  disposition  of  the  bodies  in 
the  undertakers'  establishments  in  New  York  city  was  the  occasion 
for  the  thronging  of  thousands  to  the  morbid  viewing  and  acclaim- 
ing of  the  young  men  as  —  at  least  —  not  deliberate  and  wretched 
criminals. 

It  was  the  insight  of  Doctor  Rush  as  to  this  deep-lying  trait  of 
the  human  mind  that  led  him  to  seek  a  solution  of  the  problem  of 
public  punishments  and  of  a  substitute  therefor.  He  maintained 
that  a  system  of  imprisonment  should  be  developed  along  the  fol- 
lowing lines.  A  large  ''house  should"  be  constructed  in  a  con- 
venient portion  of  the  State,  the  house  to  be  divided  into  a  number 
of  apartments,  and  with  cells  for  the  solitary  confinement  of  refrac- 
tory criminals.  There  should  be  developed  at  this  house  those 
industries  that  were  capable  of  putting  the  institution  on  a  finan- 
cially sound  basis.  There  should  be  gardens,  which  would  provide, 
by  the  labor  of  the  prisoners,  food  for  the  inmates,  and  which 
should  be  also  places  of  exercise. 

The  name  of  this  institution  should  convey  an  idea  of  its  benevo- 
lent and  salutary  design,  and  it  should  not  be  called  a  prison.  The 
direction  of  the  institution  should  be  committed  to  persons  of  high 
character,  amenable  at  all  times  to  the  Legislature  or  to  the  courts. 

Let  us  seek  to  appreciate  fully  this  project  of  Doctor  Rush,  in  the 
light  of  present-day  efforts  for  the  betterment  of  prisons.  Let  us 
ask  ourselves  what  general  reception  such  a  project  would  meet, 
even  to-day,  at  the  hands  of  those  who  still  claim  that  the  ''prison 


22  History  of  American  Prisons 

is  for  punishment. ' '  This  Philadelphia  physician,  knowing  nothing 
save  a  local  prison  that  was  a  center  of  debauchery,  proposed  an 
institution  that  would  embody : 

(a)  classification  of  offenders, 

(b)  a  rational  system  of  prison  labor, 

(c)  a  productivity  that  should  meet  the  expenses  of  the  institution, 

(d)  outdoor  employment  of  prisoners,  for  the  raising  of  food  for  their 
own  consumption, 

(e)  a  kind  of  institution  that  should  be  a  reformative  institution. 

There  is  surprisingly  close  analogy  here  with  the  ''farm  colony'* 
plan  of  prison  or  penal  institution  that  in  recent  years  has  taken 
Froot  in  many  States.  But  the  genius  of  the  physician  was  also 
most  surprisingly  manifest  in  his  further  proposition  that  the 
various  methods  of  treatment  to  be  visited  upon  the  inmates  should 
not  be  specified  by  the  committing  court,  and  that  there  should  not 
be  in  the  law  any  notice  of  the  kind  of  punishment  that  awaited 
any  crime. 

In  short,  the  public  mind  should  not  become  accustomed  to  think 
of  crime  in  terms  of  the  possible  punishment  that  might  'be  meted 
out  to  the  offender  in  the  penal  institution.  The  kinds  of  punish- 
ment that  might  be  employed  should  be  specified  in  the  law,  but 
their  duration  should  not  be  fixed,  save  as  to  a  possible  maximum. 
The  limitations  of  punishment  in  specific  cases  within  the  prison 
should  not  be  known  to  the  prisoners. 

Said  Doctor  Rush: 

**I  consider  that  this  secret  will  be  of  the  utmost  importance  in  reform- 
ing criminals  and  in  preventing  crime.  The  imagination,  when  agitated 
with  uncertainty,  will  seldom  fail  of  connecting  the  longest  duration  of 
punishment  with  the  smallest  crime". 

^      The  historian  of  penal  progress,  looking  in  future  years  most 

carefully  over  the  entire  field  of  American  penology  and  crimin- 

/     ology  for  the  first  hundred  years  from  1776,  will  dwell  with  increas- 

/     ing  admiration  upon  this  little  brochure  of  Doctor  Rush,  for  we 

///     cannot  escape  the  conviction  that  in  the  physician's  mind  was  a 

'  ^     clear  foreshadowing  of  an  indeterminate  sentence  —  the  practical 

working    out    of    which    was    conspicuously    the    contribution    of 

Enoch  C.  Wines,  Zebulon  R.  Brockway,  and  Frank  Sanborn  in 

the  days  of  the  organization  of  the  National  Prison  Association 

in  1870  at  Cincinnati,  and  in  the  solidification  of  their  theories  in 

the  first  State  reformatory  at  Elmira  a  few  years  later. 

Indeed,  the  often  quoted  ''Declaration  of  Principles,"  promul- 
gated and  adopted  at  Cincinnati  on  the  occasion  of  the  first  gather- 
ing of  that  body  which  has  become  the  large  "trade-congress"  of 
those  dealing  with  the  institutional  treatment  of  criminals  and 
other  delinquents,  the  American  Prison  Association,  contains  cer- 
tain paragraphs  that  are  interesting  to  set  along  side  the  theories 
of  Doctor  Rush,  advocated  over  eighty  years  before. 
From  the  "Declaration  of  Principles": 

>        I.     .     .     .     Punishment    is    suffering    inflicted    on    the    criminal    for    the 
wrongdoing  done  by  him,  with  a  special  view  to  secure  his  reformation. 

II.  .  .  .  The  supreme  aim  of  prison  discipline  is  the  reformation  of 
criminals,  not  the  infliction  of  vindictive  punishment. 


History  of  American  Prisons  23 

III.  The  progressive  classification  of  prisoners,  based  on  character  and 
worked  on  some  well-adjusted  mark  system,  should  be  established  in  all 
prisons  above  the  county  jail. 

IV.  .  .  .  Eewards  rather  than  punishments,  are  essential  to  every 
good  prison  system. 

VIII.  Peremptory  sentences  ought  to  be  replaced  by  those  of  indetermi- 
nate length.  Sentences  limited  only  by  satisfactory  proof  of  reformation 
should  be  substituted  for  those  measured  by  mere  lapse  of  time. 

XVI.  .  .  .  Steady,  active,  honorable  labor  is  the  basis  of  all 
reformatory  discipline. 

In  the  essay  of  Doctor  Rush,  he  suggests  nowhere  a  definite 
sentence  for  crimes.  His  **  punishments "  include  * '  painf ulness, 
labor,  watchfulness,  solitude,  and  silence. ' '  These  were  in  his  mind 
evidently  the  component  parts  of  a  prison  sentence.  The  word 
"punishment"  may  well  have  connoted  for  him  what  we  to-day 
understand  by  "imprisonment."  To  him,  "imprisonment"  con- 
noted such  idleness,  debauchery,  and  filth,  as  existed  at  the  old 
jail  on  High  street.  We  shall  trace,  from  179Q  on,  a  succession  of 
"systems"  of  prison  discipline,  but  not  until  the  above-mentioned 
development  of  the  seventies  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  reached 
will  there  probably  be  found  a  more  broad-minded,  liberal  and 
daring  plan  than  that  which,  with  some  natural  vagueness,  was 
presented  by  Doctor  Rush. 

Indeed,  the  physician  seems  to  have  embodied  in  his  plan  also 
the  conception  of  a  "court,"  quite  distinct  from  any  then  existing 
body,  that  should  visit  the  "receptacle  of  crime"  twice  a  year 
and  determine  the  nature,  degree  and  duration  (beyond  a  certain 
degree)  of  all  punishments.  No  more  power  than  was  at  the  time 
vested  in  existing  courts  was  suggested  by  Doctor  Rush  for  the  new 
court,  save  that  it  should  at  intervals  visit  the  institution  for  the 
above  purposes. 

The  theory  of  a  "court  of  parole"  or  of  a  "court  of  rehabilita- 
tion ' '  is  relatively  modern.  The  establishment  of  the  indeterminate 
sentence  in  connection  with  the  operation  of  Elmira  Reformatory 
necessitated  the  determination  by  some  legal  authority  as  to  the 
time  when  an  inmate  should  be  released  from  the  institution.  Con- 
sequently, in  most  recent  years,  boards  of  parole,  distinct  from  the 
governing  bodies  of  the  institutions  operating  under  an  indeter- 
minate sentence,  have  been  constituted  by  law,  such  as  the  Board 
of  Parole  for  State  Prisons  in  the  State  of  New  York,  and  the 
Parole  Commission  of  New  York  city.  It  should  be  clearly  under- 
stood that  at  the  time  of  conviction  the  sentencing  court  imposes  an 
indeterminate  sentence,  with  a  definite  maximum  not  greater 
than  the  maximum  provided  in  law  for  the  specific  crime.  Within 
the  maximum  at  one  extreme,  and  whatever  minimum  the  court  may 
have  imposed  —  or  if  the  court  has  not  imposed  any  minimum,  at 
any  time  within  the  maximum  sentence,  the  separate  board  or 
court  of  parole  may  release  the  prisoner  upon  "parole."  Such  is, 
in  general,  the  present-day  procedure. 

In  Doctor  Rush's  mind,  his  "court"  should  operate  distinct 
from  the  board  of  managers  of  the  proposed  institution.  As  a 
physician,  he  was  hostile  to  any  uniform  or  wholesale  punitive 


24  History  OF  American  Prisons 

treatment  of  criminals.'^  Punishments,  he  contended,  should  be 
adapted  to  the  constitutions  and  tempers  of  prisoners.  The  nature, 
degrees  and  duration  of  punishments  should  be  adapted  to  crimes, 
as  they  arose  from  passion,  habit  or  temptation.  In  short,  the 
physician  urged,  as  a  general  principle  of  penal  treatment,  the 
individualization  of  punishment. 

Again,  the  physician  pointed  out  that  the  degree,  nature  and 
duration  of  pain,  as  a  punishment,  would  require  some  knowledge 
of  the  principles  of  sensation  and  of  the  ''sympathies"  that  occur 
in  the  nervous  system : 

"In  the  application  of  punishments,  the  utmost  possible  advantages  should 
be  taken  of  the  association  of  ideas,  of  habit  and  of  imitation.  ...  I 
have  no  more  doubt  of  every  crime  having  its  cure  in  moral  and  physical 
influences  than  I  have  of  the  efficacy  of  the  Peruvian  bark  in  curing  the 
intermittent  fever.  .  .  .  The  great  art  of  surgery  has  been  said  to  con- 
sist in  saving,  not  in  destroying  or  amputating  the  diseased  parts  of  the 
human  body.  Let  governments  learn  to  imitate,  in  this  respect,  the  skill 
and  humanity  of  the  healing  art." 

In  short,  the  physician  here  regarded  the  individual  prisoner  as  a 
**case,"  each  differing  from  the  other.  Somewhere  there  was  a 
cure  for  every  criminal,  but  the  medicine  for  one  was  not  necessar- 
ily the  medicine  for  his  fellow.  In  the  diagnosis,  prognosis  and 
treatment  of  the  imprisoned  criminal,  the  physician  would  employ 
the  principles  of  physiology  and  psychology  as  then  known  to 
specialists. 

But,  so  far  as  we  have  learned  in  our  study  of  this  period,  the 
chief  interests  of  the  Quaker  physician  were  in  the  line  of  his  pro- 
fessional speciality.  In  the  development  of  the  first  prison  system 
of  Philadelphia,  which  was  to  become  the  early  model  for  other 
American  States,  it  was  other  men  —  perhaps  more  ''practical" — 
like  Caleb  Lownes,  also  a  Quaker,  who  were  to  play  the  constructive 
part,  and  we  do  not  now  know  whether  the  essay  of  Doctor  Rush, 
read  not  in  a  meeting  of  the  Philadelphia  prison  society,  but  before 
another  group,  ever  gained  much  circulation. 

To-day,  however,  his  long-forgotten  essay  brings  him  before  us 
as  a  brilliant  theorist,  possessing  almost  uncanny  prescience,  joining 
him  closely  with  the  "pioneers"  of  eighty  years  later  —  linking 
us,  in  a  way,  with  the  far  earlier  William  Penn  in  the  breadth  of 
his  vision  —  and  making  the  present-day  program  of  the  extension 
of  the  indeterminate  sentence,  the  individual  treatment  of  the 
prisoner,  and  the  rational  and  scientific  administration  of  prisons 
seem  not  so  strongly  "modern"  in  its  conception  or  execution. 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  WALNUT  STREET  PRISON 

We  come  to  the  year  1790,  a  noteworthy  year  in  the  history  of 
prison  reform.  The  Pennsylvania  Legislature  provided  in  this 
year  that  a  certain  prison,  located  in  Walnut  street,  Philadelphia, 
and  which  had  been  begun  in  1773,  should  be  remodeled,  after 
which  it  should  receive  the  prisoners  from  the  old  High  Street 
Prison.^  In  this  renovated  prison  on  Walnut  street  there  should  be 
confined  two  classes  of  prisoners,  those  who  had  been  convicted  of 
the  more  serious  offenses,  and  those  who  had  committed  crimes  of 
lesser  severity. 

We  find  thus  the  law  now  providing  a  certain  rough  basis  of 
classification  —  which  is  in  a  way  the  beginning  of  the  rational 
treatment  of  prisoners.  The  more  serious  offenders  were  to  be 
confined  in  sixteen  solitary  cells,  each  6  feet  wide,  8  feet  long,  and 
9  feet  high,  a  total  of  432  cubic  feet.  The  less  **  hardened  and 
dangerous"  convicts  were  to  be  lodged  in  large  rooms,  approxi- 
mately 20  by  18  feet  in  size.  The  convicts  in  the  solitary  cells  were 
to  be  absolutely  without  labor ;  the  other  convicts  were  to  work  in 
shops  during  the  day,  in  association  with  each  other.^ 

We  should  pause  here  to  emphasize  the  fundamental  importance 
of  the  proper  housing  of  prisoners,  from  several  standpoints  — 
safety,  moral  health  and  comfort.  In  this  planned  renovation  of 
the  Walnut  Street  Prison  we  face  for  the  first  time  in  our  historical 
survey  the  cellular  problem.  Shall  prisoners  be  housed  separately 
or  in  association?  Shall  the  separate  housing  of  prisoners  be  for 
purposes  of  punishment?  Shall  prisoners  be  always  separately 
housed,  or  shall  they  be  allowed  to  be  at  any  time  in  association? 
If  at  any  time,  shall  they  work  in  association  and  be  housed  sepa- 
rately when  not  working  ?  Shall  prisoners  be  housed,  if  in  associa- 
tion, in  large  dormitory  groups,  or  in  small  groups  ?  If  housed  in 
association,  what  degree  of  guarding  and  supervision  will  be 
necessary  or  advisable? 

The  provisions  for  housing  the  inmates  of  a  prison  are  a  vital 
matter.  Lodging,  meals  and  treatment  are  fundamental  problems 
of  any  prison.  The  Walnut  Street  Prison  became  of  nation-wide \ 
significance  not  because  of  any  extraordinary  conception  in  its 
development,  but  because,  for  lack  of  any  other  model,  it  became  the 
pattern  upon  which  numerous  other  State  prisons  were  built  and 
administered  in  the  succeeding  thirty  years  —  until  the  far  more 
noteworthy  development  of  the  competing  prison  systems  of  Au- 
burn and  Pennsylvania  rose  suddenly,  in  the  twenties  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  In  short,  what  was  done  at  Walnut  Street  condi- 
tioned practically  absolutely  the  prison  system,  so  far  as  there  was  j^ 
a  system,  in  the  United  States  for  nearly  forty  years.  ^ 


1  Vaux,  p.  31. 

2  La  Itochefoucauld-Liancourt,   p. 


[25] 


26  History  of  American  Prisons 

It  is  worth  while,  therefore,  to  dwell  in  some  detail  upon  this 
device  of  the  Quaker  philanthropists  to  combine  effective  custody 
and  punishment  of  criminals  with  humane  treatment.  The  Walnut 
Street  Prison  started  with  the  proposition  of  segregating  its  sup- 
posedly most  difficult  and  dangerous  cases.  The  single  cells  were 
thus  at  the  outset  branded  in  the  public  mind  as  punishment  cells, 
for  the  protection  of  society  and  for  the  infliction  of  the  hardest 
endurable  conditions. 

In  this  respect,  the  single  separate  cells  were  the  very  extreme 
antithesis  of  the  crowded  promiscuous  living  rooms  of  the  old  — 
and  standard  —  local  jail.  Half-way  between  the  old  crowded 
jail  room  and  the  separate  cell  were  the  rooms  in  Walnut  street  for 
the  lesser  offenders.  It  seemed  to  be  believed  that  a  number  of 
prisoners,  less  dangerous  so  far  as  known,  might  be  housed  in  one 
room. 

Herein  the  first  prison  system  committed  a  fundamental  error, 
which  led  only  too  soon,  among  other  causes,  to  the  absolute  and 
deplorable  breakdown  of  the  first  system  of  prison  administration. 
For  we  shall  shortly  see  how,  as  the  population  of  the  prisons  in- 
creased, there  grew  up  the  constant  temptation  and  even  necessity 
for  the  prison  authorities  to  crowd  more  and  more  prisoners  into 
the  so-called  ** night  rooms,"  where  the  bulk  of  the  inmates  not 
only  slept,  but  also  passed  their  leisure  time.  Amid  naturally 
contaminating  surroundings,  inmates  almost  invariably  corrupt 
each  other,  and  undermine  prison  discipline  and  authority. 

What  opportunities  did  the  Walnut  Street  Prison  afford  for  the 
classification  of  prisoners?  The  old  High  Street  Prison  had  col- 
lected its  inmates  in  a  general  mass.  The  Walnut  Street  Prison 
consisted  of  several  buildings,  housing  not  only  convicts  but  lesser 
offenders  (called  vagrants),  witnesses  and  debtors. 

The  total  area  of  the  prison  enclosure  was  400  by  200  feet.®  The 
prison  building  for  those  convicts  who  worked  in  association  during 
the  day  was  a  large  stone  structure,  184  feet  long,  on  the  north  side 
of  the  enclosure,  two  stories  high,  and  divided  into  the  above-men- 
tioned night-rooms.  These  rooms  were  separated  from  each  other 
by  a  central  hallway,  extending  the  length  of  the  building,  and 
11%  feet  wide.  There  were  eight  lodging  or  night-rooms,  approxi- 
mately 18  feet  by  20  feet,  of  this  kind  on  each  of  the  two  floors. 

On  the  east  and  west  ends  of  the  buildings  were  two  wings, 
extending  90  feet  south,  2  stories  high,  containing  4  rooms  on  each 
floor,  nearly  the  size  of  those  in  the  large  building.  On  the  south 
side  there  was  a  large  stone  building  designed  as  a  workhouse,  where 
the  debtors  were  confined. 

Three  hundred  feet  of  the  north  part  of  the  enclosure  were 
divided  off  for  the  use  of  the  convict  population,  and  100  feet  of 
the  south  end  of  the  yard  for  the  debtors.  The  female  prisoners 
used  a  yard  90  by  32  feet,  and  the  vagrants  one  of  similar  size. 

The  building  that  contained  the  16  solitary  or  separate  cells, 
which  was  called  the  ''penitentiary  house"  after  the  term  intro 

»  General  Description  from  Lownes.     Acct.  of  Alterations,  etc.,  pp.  88Cf. 


History  of  American  Prisons  27 

duced  into  England  by  John  Howard,^  was  of  plain  brick,  and 
160  feet  by  80  in  size.  Each  cell  was  8  feet  long,  6  feet  wide,  and 
10  feet  high,  had  two  doors,  an  outer  wooden  one,  and  an  inside 
iron  door.*  A  passage  ran  through  the  middle  of  the  floor,  separat- 
ing the  cells,  just  as  in  most  buildings  for  the  lodging  of  any 
considerable  number  of  persons  the  interior  hall  runs  down  the 
center  of  the  floor,  with  rooms  on  each  side  of  the  corridor.  A 
stove  in  the  corridor  was  to  warm  the  rooms.  Each  cell  had  a 
large  leaden  pipe  that  led  to  the  sewer,  and  thus  formed  a  very 
primitive  kind  of  a  closet.  The  window  of  the  cell  was  secured 
by  blinds  and  wire,  to  prevent  anything  being  passed  in  or  out. 
The  convicts  in  the  solitary  cells  were  not  to  labor ;  the  other  con- 
victs worked  in  shops  during  the  day. 

That  this  ''penitentiary  house"  was  the  ** cradle  of  the  American 
system  of  reformative  prison  discipline"  was  the  assertion  of  Doc- 
tor Julius,  th§  noted  Prussian  prison  student  and  investigator, 
who  visited  this  country  in  the  early  thirties  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  and  published  the  above  statement  in  1839.  Dr.  Julius 
laid  stress  on  the  fact  that  this  prison  for  the  dangerous  offenders 
embodied  the  principle  of  a  separate  cell  for  each  inmate,  which 
became  ultimately  the  controlling  factor  in  the  erection  of  American 
prisons.  Persons  who  had  been  convicted  of  crimes  that  were 
formerly  punishable  by  death  were  to  spend  from  one-twentieth  to 
one-half  of  their  term  in  solitary  confinement. 

The  yard  surrounding  the  building  containing  the  solitary  cells 
was  used  as  a  garden,  and  was  managed  by  some  of  the  orderly 
convicts.  Here  we  may  perhaps  find  the  echo  of  one  of  the 
propositions  of  Doctor  Rush.  The  large  yard  in  which  was  located 
the  other  prison  building  was  used  as  a  place  of  labor  of  convicts, 
and  also  as  an  exercise  yard.^ 

It  was  probably  not  much  of  a  step  in  the  course  of  time  from 
these  solitary  cells  for  the  worst  offenders  to  the  **dark  cell"  and 
the  ** dungeon."  At  any  rate,  here  was  the  prototype.  In  admin- 
istering these  cells  as  definite  places  of  punishment,  the  tendency 
would  grow  to  make  them  as  forbidding  and  repellent  as  possible. 
An  easy  development  caused  such  cells  to  be  used  as  the  severest 
form  of  punishment  except  corporal  punishment. 

By  the  transfer  of  the  prisoners  from  the  High  Street  Prison  to 
Walnut  street,  three  great  evils  of  the  former  prison  were  abolished, 
namely,  the  commingling  of  the  sexes,  the  use  of  spirituous  liquors, 
and  the  indiscriminate  confinement  of  debtors  and  witnesses  with 
those  confined  for  criminal  offenses.  The  new  prison  made  as 
clean  a  sweep  as  possible  of  the  old  customs.  The  convicts  at  Wal- 
nut street  were  to  be  clothed  in  suits  of  uniform  color  and  make. 
Labor  was  the  prominent  feature  of  the  routine.  Eight  hours  of 
work  were  required  daily  in  November,  December  and  January, 

♦  Julius.     "  Sittleche  Zusbaende,"  Vol.  II,  p.  124. 

'  A  phrase  current  by  1779  in  English  law.  Julius.  "  Sittleche  Zusbaende," 
p.  132. 

»  Lownes.     Acct.  of  Alterations,  etc.,  pp.  88flF. 


28  History  of  American  Prisons 

nine  hours  in  February  and  October,  and  ten  hours  in  the  other 
months.  Strenuousness  and  strictness  of  routine  were  fundament- 
als of  the  new  system/ 

The  government  of  the  prison  was  vested  in  a  board  of  twelve 
managers,  called  **  inspectors, "  who  were  appointed  from  among 
the  citizens  by  the  mayor  and  two  aldermen  of  Philadelphia.  Seven 
members  of  the  board  constituted  a  quorum.  A  sub-committee  of 
two  members  were  to  make  weekly,  or  even  more  frequent,  visits  to 
the  prison  in  order  to  supervise  the  details  of  management  in  all 
particulars.  Most  of  the  members  of  the  board  were  of  the  Society 
of  Friends.  The  prison  was  also  to  be  visited  every  day  by  one 
or  more  of  the  inspectors,  ''who  all  took  great  delight  and  were 
indefatigable  in  the  execution  of  the  humane  task  allotted  to 
them."« 

Throughout  our  study  we  naturally  find  it  of  interest  to  trace  the 
origins  of  methods  that  later  become  custom.  Here  in  the  Phila- 
delphia prison  of  1790,  and  from  then  on,  we  find  at  the  outset  the 
theory  that  an  unpaid  board  of  managers,  having  the  appointment 
of  a  superintendent  or  warden,  enlists  volunteer  service  of  a  high 
quality  from  among  the  citizens.  The  power  that  appoints  such  a 
board  becomes  in  time  generally  the  Legislature  or  the  governor. 
The  board  of  managers  or  directors,  or  ''inspectors"  determines 
the  general  policies  of  the  institution,  and  through  a  sub-committee 
supervises  the  administration.  The  executive  power  is  vested  in 
one  official,  the  warden,  or  superintendent  (or,  as  he  was  early 
called  in  New  York,  the  ' '  agent  and  warden ' ' )  who  is  a  paid  officer, 
and  is  responsible  to  the  board  of  managers.  This  general  form  of 
management  of  American  prisons  has  varied  little  since  its  initia- 
tion at  Walnut  street. 

The  new  board  of  managers,  among  whom  the  dominant  figure 
was  Caleb  Lownes,^  a  Quaker,  had  solicitude  for  many  things  in 
the  convict's  life.  Moral  and  religious  instruction  was  to  be  pro- 
vided through  the  Bible  and  other  religious  books.  Divine  service 
was  to  be  held  weekly.  So  humane,  by  comparison  with  the  earlier 
methods  of  dealing  with  criminals,  were  the  new  projects  and 
proposals  of  law,  that  a  time  limit  of  five  years  was  set  upon  the 
new  law,  and  at  the  end  of  the  time  only  a  distinct  success  of  the 
new  methods,  achieved  in  the  meantime,  would  warrant  a  continua- 
tion of  the  system.^^  Yet,  by  1794,  the  results  were  so  remarkable 
that  the  Legislature  went  still  further  and  reduced  the  infliction  of 
capital  punishment  to  premeditated  murder  alone.^* 

Over  the  new  system  at  Walnut  street  there  was  in  Philadelphia 
the  greatest  enthusiasm.  Out  of  jail  chaos  seemed  to  have  come 
prison  order.  The  results  appeared  almost  miraculous.  In  1790 
the  law  relative  to  the  employment  of  prisoners  upon  the  public 

'  Gray,     Prison  Discipline  in  America,  p.  20. 

*  Wm.  Roscoe.     "  Observations  on  Penal  Jurisprudence,"  p.  88. 

•  Roche-Lian.  Voyage,  etc. 
10  Turnbull,  p.   11. 

"  Buxton. 


HisiORY  OF  American  Prisons  29 

roads  had  been  repealed,  and  labor  within  the  prison  substituted.^^ 
The  new  board  of  managers  had  made  known  to  the  prisoners  at 
the  outset 

**that  the  new  system  would  be  carried  into  full  effect;  that  their  treatment 
would  depend  upon  their  conduct,  and  that  those  who  evinced  a  disposition 
which  would  afford  encouragement  to  the  inspectors  to  believe  that  they 
might  be  restored  to  their  liberty  should  be  recommended  to  the  governor 
for  a  pardon,  as  soon  as  circumstances  would  permit;  but  if  they  were  con- 
stricted again,  the  law  in  its  fullest  vigor  would  be  carried  into  effect  against 
ihem.  A  change  of  conduct  was  early  visible.  They  were  encouraged  to 
labor.  Many  were  pardoned,  and  before  a  year  had  expired  their  behaviour 
was  almost  without  exception  decent,  orderly  and  respectful. ' ' " 

What  were  the  apparently  practical,  statistical  results? 

There  was  proclaimed  a  noteworthy  diminution  of  crime  in  Phila- 
delphia in  the  first  years  of  the  new  system.  Convictions  for  crime 
and  commitments  to  the  prison,  amounting  to  131  in  1789,  had 
fallen  by  1793  to  45.  The  prison  was  called  a  school  of  reformation 
and  a  place  of  public  labor.^*  In  the  four  years  preceding  the 
beginning  of  the  new  system  at  Walnut  street,  104  prisoners  had 
escaped  from  the  High  Street  Prison;  not  a  prisoner  escaped  in 
the  four  succeeding  years  at  Walnut  street,  save  the  fourteen 
prisoners  who  ran  away  on  the  opening  day,  when  a  plot  to  discredit 
the  innovation  was  engineered  by  the  hostile  jailer. ^^ 

Many  of  us  are  familiar  with  certain  extraordinary  apparent  suc- 
cesses that  have  attended  in  recent  years  the  introduction  of  new 
and  bold  methods,  in  prisons  and  other  institutions,  in  the  treat- 
ment of  prisoners.  We  have  heard  of  and  seen,  the  remarkable 
results  of  the  application  of  the  ''honor  system"  in  a  score  of 
prisons.  We  have  heard  of  the  best  days  of  self-government  at 
Sing  Sing,  under  Thomas  Mott  Osborne.  We  have  seen  road-work 
conducted  under  almost  unbelievably  liberal  conditions,  with  appar- 
ent success.  We  know  the  "thrill"  of  a  successful  new  method, 
that  seems  almost  to  challenge  the  traditional  *  *  laws  of  penological 
gravitation"  as  one  friendly  critic  has  put  it. 

We  can,  therefore,  sense  the  carrying  power  of  the  words  of 
Caleb  Lownes,  writing  in  Philadelphia  in  1797  of  the  new  prison: 

**Our  streets  meet  with  no  interruption  from  those  characters  that  formerly 
rendered  it  dangerous  to  walk  out  of  an  evening.  Our  roads  in  the  vicinity 
of  the  city,  so  constantly  infested  with  robbers,  are  seldom  disturbed  by 
these  dangerous  characters.  .  .  .  Our  houses,  stores  and  vessels,  so  per- 
petually disturbed  and  robbed,  no  longer  experience  these  alarming  evils. 
We  lie  down  in  peace,  we  sleep  in  security.  There  have  been  but  two  instances 
of  burglaries  in  this  city  and  county  for  near  two  years.  Pickpockets,  for- 
merly such  pests  to  society,  are  now  unknown.  .  .  .  Out  of  near  200 
persons  pardoned  by  the  governor,  only  four  have  been  recommitted.  If  the 
discharged  prisoners  have  returned  to  their  old  courses,  they  have  chosen 
the  risk  of  being  hanged  in  other  States,  rather  than  encounter  the  certainty 
of  their  being  confined  in  the  penitentiary  cells  of  this. ' ' " 

We  come  now  upon  one  of  the  earlier  evidences  of  the  mutual 
influencing  of  Europe  and  America  in  penitentiary  matters.    The 

«  Vaux. 


"  vaux. 

"  Lownes.     Alterations,  p.  91. 

"  Gray.     Prison  Discipline  in  America. 

"Buxton,  pp.  91-98. 

"  Lownes.     Alterations,  etc.,  p.   100. 


30  History  of  American  Prisons 

Walnut  Street  Prison  began  to  be  known  in  Europe.  In  1794  the 
Due  de  La  Rochefoueauld-Liancourt,  after  visiting  the  prison,  pro- 
claimed its  excellences  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic. 

Robert  Turnbull,  visiting  the  prison  in  1796  from  the  south, 
called  it  in  a  pamphlet  a  ' '  wonder  of  the  world. "  "  De  Beaumont 
and  de  Tocqueville,  forty  years  later,  reported  that  ''all  the  world 
repeated  the  praise  of  La  Rochefoucauld.'^ 

It  was  natural  that  other  States,  seeking  a  model  for  their  own 
new  prison  construction,  should  follow  the  lead  of  such  an  enlight- 
ened commonwealth  as  Pennsylvania,  particularly  since  that  State 
was  the  first  to  seek  a  modern  solution  of  the  problems  of  dealing 
institutionally  with  convicts.  New  York  built  a  prison  in  1796, 
Virginia  in  1800,  Massachusetts  in  1804,  Vermont  in  1808,  Mary- 
land in  1811,  New  Hampshire  in  1812  and  New  York  a  second 
prison  in  1816,  the  latter  at  Auburn,  in  the  western  part  of  the 
State.  All  of  these  earliest  State  prisons  were  constructed  upon 
the  general  lines  of  the  Walnut  street  institution,  with  large  com- 
mon lodging  or  night-rooms  for  the  prisoners,  and  with  large  rooms 
for  their  associated  labor. 

Most  of  these  prisons  copied  also  the  system  of  solitary  cells 
for  major  offenders.  Into  the  laws  of  the  above-mentioned  States 
were  written,  more  or  less  literally,  the  laws  of  Pennsylvania  regu- 
lating the  administration  of  the  Walnut  Street  Prison.  The  rules 
and  regulations  of  the  board  of  inspectors  were  likewise  frequently 
copied.  There  was  a  striking  absence  of  initiative  on  the  part  of 
other  States. 

We  have  said  that  the  basic  principles  of  the  new  prison  were 
labor  and  humane  treatment.  Whereas  the  prisoners  in  solitary 
confinement  saw  their  keepers  but  once  a  day,  and  were  then  served 
with  a  coarse  pudding  of  maize  and  molasses,  and  whereas  these 
same  convicts  could  acquire  only  after  a  certain  time  the  privilege 
of  working  in  their  cells,  and  of  reading  therein,  not  being  per- 
mitted to  emerge  from  these  cells  except  when  ill,  the  ordinary 
convicts,  not  sentenced  to  solitary  confinement,  presented  such  a 
spirit  of  industry  that  it  was  difficult  for  Turnbull,  visiting  the 
prison  in  1796,  to  divest  himself  of  the  idea  that  these  were  surely 
not  convicts  at  all,  but  accustomed  to  labor  from  their  infancy." 

The  inmates  worked  at  carpentry,  joinery,  weaving,  shoemaking, 
tailoring,  and  the  making  of  nails  —  all  of  them  occupations  that 
later  became  stock  industries  in  American  prisons.  The  unskilled 
convicts,  and  the  group  classified  as  "vagrants,"  were  employed 
in  beating  hemp  and  picking  moss,  wood  or  oakum.  The  female 
convicts  worked  at  spinning  cotton,  yarn,  carding  wool,  picking 
cotton,  preparing  flax  and  hemp,  and  washing  and  mending.^^ 

In  this  earliest  prison  we  find  the  complex  problem  rising  of 
a  wage  incentive  for  the  efficient  labor  of  the  prisoners.  Through- 
out all  prison  administrations,  it  is  found  that  two  motives  above 
all  others  actuate  the  prisoner  to  industrial  effort:     The  hope  of 

"  Turnbull,  p.   4. 
"Turnbull,  p.   16. 
"Turnbull,  p.  6. 


History  of  American  Prisons  31 

earlier  release  from  prison  for  good  work,  and  the  hope  of  some 
financial  recompense  for  his  work.  Perhaps  no  more  difficult  prob- 
lem still  presents  itself  in  American  prisons  than  an  equable 
wage  scale  and  an  equable  commutation  table.  After  maintaining 
State  prisons  in  New  York  for  over  a  century,  since  1796,  the 
Empire  State  has  as  yet  been  able  to  concede  to  the  prisoners  as  a 
daily  wage  only  one  cent  and  a  half !  And  in  other  States,  under 
different  systems  of  labor  and  of  marketing  the  products  of  labor, 
there  is  little  uniformity  or  adequacy  in  the  wages  granted.  The 
prison  wage  and  prison  labor  problems  are  still  in  1921  unsolved  Cv 
m  this  country. 

Therefore,  it  is  of  special  interest  to  see  the  manner  in  which 
the  problems  were  attacked  in  this  earliest  State  prison.  Each  male 
prisoner  at  Walnut  street  was  said  to  be  credited  with  fair  pay  for 
his  labor,  and  was  debited  with  the  cost  of  his  daily  maintenance, 
which  is  still  a  favorite  and  reasonable  method  in  theory,  though  not 
in  practice.  Moreover,  the  hope  of  an  ultimate  pardon  was  held 
always  before  the  prisoners'  minds.  Approximately  15  cents  a  day 
was  charged  to  the  individual  prisoner  for  board,  and  his  share  of 
the  tools,  and  his  earnings  depended  upon  his  ability  and  the  nature 
of  his  task.  Some  prisoners  earned  more  than  a  dollar  a  day,  and 
went  out  of  the  prison  with  more  than  fifty  dollars  to  their  credit.-*' 
All  prisoners,  it  was  said,  were  released  well  clothed,  and  mostly 
with  money  in  their  pocket.  The  discharged  prisoner  in  need  was 
assisted  by  the  Philadelphia  Prison  Society. 

The  wages  paid  to  the  prisoners  were  the  same  as,  or  somewhat 
lower  than,  those  paid  for  similar  work  on  the  outside.  The  law 
required  that  the  prisoner  should  pay  the  costs  of  his  trial,  and 
generally  also  a  fine.  If  there  was  a  balance  against  the  prisoner 
at  the  time  of  the  expiration  of  his  sentence,  he  was  retained  until 
it  was  liquidated.    If  the  balance  was  in  his  favor,  he  received  it.^* 

That  the  convicts  might  know  both  their  earnings  and  their 
obligations,  they  carried  their  accounts  in  little  books.  The  women 
prisoners  had  similar  chances  to  earn  small  sums,  and  were  debited 
for  each  day's  maintenance  about  seven  cents.^^  Untried  prisoners 
were  not  forced  to  work,  but  those  who  desired  work  were  given 
work  to  do.^^ 

Naturally,  this  chance  to  earn  wages  proved  a  powerful  stimulus, 
and  gave  to  the  prison  administration  a  chance  to  hold  over  the 
convicts  the  constant  threat,  not  only  of  the  solitary  cell  in  cases 
of  serious  disobedience,  but  also  of  a  cessation  of  wages  during 
that  period,  accompanied  by  a  continuation  of  the  daily  main- 
tenance expenses. 

The  obedient  convict  fared  relatively  well.  No  irons  or  chains 
were  allowed  in  the  prison.  The  guards  were  forbidden  to  use 
sabres,  pistols,  or  even  canes.^^  Corporal  punishment  was  said  to 
be  unknown  within  the  prison.     Moreover,  while  silence  was  the 

20  Lownes.     Alterations,  p.  98. 

21  Turnbull,  p.  48. 
2«  Buxton,  p.  92. 
2*  Buxton,  p.  93. 

26  Lownes,  pp.  92-93. 


32  History  of  American  Prisons 

inflexible  rule  in  the  shops  and  at  table,  the  convicts  were  allowed 
to  converse  in  their  lodging  rooms  at  night,  in  low  tones,  until 
ordered  to  bed.-^  It  might  be  stated,  parenthetically,  that  the 
rule  of  silence  was  not  imposed  upon  the  female  prisoners. 

"The  orderly  prisoners,  who  by  their  industry  earn  a  sufficiency  for  the 
purpose,  are  allowed  a  better  suit  to  attend  public  worship.  ...  No 
provisions  are  allowed  besides  the  prison  allowance,  except  to  the  more 
laborious  part  of  the  prisoners,  while  orderly,  who  are  allowed  to  get  some 
of  the  heads  of  the  sheep  from  the  butcher  at  their  own  expense;  this  is 
esteemed  an  indulgence,  and  is  attended  with  good  effects,  both  physical  and 
mental.     .     .     .     The    orderly   women   are   sometimes   indulged   with   tea. ' '  ^ 

This  absence  and  virtual  prohibition  of  deadly  weapons,  or  of 
any  weapons  of  defense  whatsoever,  was  an  extraordinary  feature 
of  this  first  prison  system.  We  find  here,  at  the  outset,  a  series  of 
regulations,  and  a  method  of  attempting  a  humane  and  considerate 
treatment  of  prisoners,  that  are  a  revelation  to  those  who  have 
assumed  that  efforts  at  honor  systems,  equable  wages,  reasonable 
hours  of  labor,  and  government  without  the  use  of  deadly  weapons 
are  new  ideas.  In  a  word,  the  earliest  prison  system  started  upon 
a  high  plane  that  has  seldom  been  reached  in  any  succeeding 
generation. 

Throughout  the  hundred  and  thirty  years  or  more  since  the 
Walnut  street  institution  began  its  career,  there  have  been  only  a 
few  years  at  the  beginning  and  at  the  end  of  this  span  of  more  than 
a  century  and  a  quarter  when  it  has  been  held  that  prisons  can  be 
largely  governed  without  weapons  of  any  sort.  When  revolvers 
were  abolished  at  Sing  Sing  prison  in  1916  it  was  regarded  as  not 
only  revolutionary,  but  dangerous.  Indeed,  during  the  period  of 
the  preparation  of  this  study,  residents  of  Ossining,  the  city  in 
which  Sing  Sing  is  located,  appealed  to  the  prison  authorities  ask- 
ing that  revolvers  be  restored  to  the  guards  who  were  supervising 
the  prisoners  engaged  in  excavating  upon  the  site  of  the  new  prison. 

There  is,  in  this  twentieth  century,  a  popular  idea  that  such 
institutions  as  the  honor  system,  the  outdoor  employment  of  con- 
victs, the  classification  of  offenders,  self-government,  and  such  prin- 
ciples as  the  indeterminate  sentence  are  essentially  the  outgrowth 
of  recent  experiments  by  daring  prison  wordens.  But,  without 
detracting  from  the  fine  initiative  that  has  led  modern  wardens  or 
superintendents  to  undertake  new  methods,  where  politics  or  pre- 
cedents were  averse  to  such  enterprises,  we  must  nevertheless  have 
recourse  to  the  old  adage  that  there  is  nothing  new  under  the  sun, 
and  in  justice  to  the  ''old  days"  thus  outline  in  considerable  detail 
these  earliest  efforts  to  conduct  a  penal  institution  with  high  intelli- 
gence and  deep  interest  in  the  welfare  of  the  prisoner. 

22Turnbull,  p.  26. 
28  Lownes,  pp.  92,  93. 


CHAPTER  IV 


EARLY  EUROPEAN  INFLUENCES 

In  seeking  for  the  explanation  of  such  apparently  immediate 
enlightenment  on  the  part  of  the  pioneer  penologists,  we  find  that 
the  Friends  who  largely  developed  this  earliest  system  were  not 
without  a  well-grounded  knowledge  of  the  penological  principles 
of  the  times.  There  was  constant  intercourse  in  literature  between 
the  old  world  and  America.  Shipments  of  the  latest  books  were 
eagerly  awaited  and  perused.  William  Bradford 's  little  book,  from 
which  we  have  several  times  quoted,  carried  as  the  motto  on  the 
title  page  the  statement  of  Montesquieu: 

"If  we  inquire  into  the  cause  of  all  human  corruptions,  we  shall  find  that 
they  proceed  from  the  impunity  of  crime,  and  not  from  the  moderation  of 
punishment '  '.^ 

And  Bradford  himself  held  that 

**it  is  from  the  ignorance,  wretchedness  and  corrupted  manners  of  a  people 
that  crimes  proceed.  In  a  country  where  these  do  not  prevail,  moderate 
punishments,  strictly  enforced,  will  be  a  curb  as  effective  as  the  greatest 
severity.  A  mitigation  of  punishment  ought,  therefore,  to  be  accompanied 
as  far  as  possible  by  a  diffusion  of  knowledge,  and  strict  execution  of  laws.* 

In  1773,  three  years  before  the  first  prisoners'  aid  society  in 
Philadelphia  was  founded,  John  Howard,  an  English  gentleman, 
had  begun  to  visit  English  prisons  as  a  horrified  yet  careful  and 
balanced  observer  of  the  gross  evils  of  those  institutions.  Prom 
1773  until  the  publication  of  his  monumental  work  on  the  ''State 
of  Prisons  in  England  and  Wales,"  in  1777,  he  was  an  indefati- 
gable, painstaking  investigator,  visiting  the  principal  European 
countries,  and  inspecting  scores  of  prisons,  jails  and  lazarettos. 
Howard's  work  stands  out  in  spectacular  singleness  during  this 
period,  and  when  his  work  was  published, 

**  there  was  a  universal  outcry  of  horror  and  indignation  which  was  heard 
throughout  the  civilized  world,  when  he  disclosed  the  misery  everywhere 
suffered  by  the  prisoners.'" 

It  was  inevitable  that  he  should  soon  become  known  in  the  new 
and  pioneering  republic  across  the  Atlantic  as  the  great  authority 
on  prison  discipline  and  prison  construction.  It  is  likely  that 
ultimately,  when  this  early  period  of  our  penal  history  is  fully 
explored,  it  will  be  found  that  John  Howard  was  in  many  respects 
a  founder  of  our  American  prison  system.  He  was  not,  to  be  sure, 
the  direct  incentive  to  prison  reform  in  this  country,  because 
''prison  reform,"  as  we  have  seen,  has  already  organized  a  chari- 
table society  in  Philadelphia  by  1776.  Yet  he  was  unquestionably  a 
substantial  influence.     It  is  a  curious  coincidence,  perhaps,  that 

^  Bradford.  Enquiry,  p.  .  . . 
2  Bradford.  Enquiry,  p.  43. 
»  Encyclopedia  Americana,  1832,  Vol,  X,  p.  342. 

[33] 


34  History  of  American  Prisons 

Howard's  first  book  on  prisons  appeared  almost  contempora- 
neously with  the  founding  of  the  first  prison  reform  society  in 
America  in  the  republican  era,  and  that  his  death  occurred  in 
1790,  the  very  year  of  the  opening  of  the  first  State  prison  man- 
aged in  accordance  with  a  highly  humane  plan  of  prison  discipline. 
Caleb  Lownes,  William  Bradford,  and  others  of  the  Society  of 
Friends  became  early  acquainted  with  Howard's  views,  which  were 
in  part  summarized  by  Bradford,  and  which  we  have  still  further 
summarized  below :  * 

Prisons  for  convicts  at  labor  ought  to  be  in  or  near  a  large  town  or  city, 
and  easily  accessible  to  inspection. 

Inspection  —  that  is,  direction  —  should  not  be  assumed  from  any  mercenary- 
views,  but  solely  from  a  sense  of  duty,  and  the  love  of  humanity. 

Steady,  lenient  and  persuasive  measures  have  always  been  found  the  best 
means  of  preventing  escapes. 

The  great  object  of  prisons  ought  to  be  to  reclaim  and  reform  prisoners. 

The  earnings  of  the  prisoners,  from  their  labor,  ought  to  be  a  secondary 
consideration  to  the  State. 

Young  offenders  ought  to  be  separated  from  older  offenders. 

Solitary  confinement,  on  coarse  diet,  should  always  be  the  inevitable  por- 
tion of  every  old  or  great  offender.  But  such  punishment  is  best  inflicted 
at  intervals,  seldom  more  than  20  or  30  days  at  a  time. 


"-Tl 


oward's  untiring  investigations  in  England  and  on  the  conti- 
nent brought  relatively  quick  results.  In  1779,  the  English  par- 
liament passed  an  act  establishing  ''penitentiary  houses"  near 
London,  the  objects  of  which  were: 

"To  seclude  the  criminals  from  their  former  associates;  to  separate  those 
of  whom  hopes  might  be  entertained  from  those  who  were  desperate;  to  teach 
them  useful  trades;  to  accustom  them  to  habits  of  industry;  to  give  them 
religious  instruction,  and  to  provide  them  with  a  recommendation  to  the 
world,  and  the  means  of  obtaining  an  honest  livelihood  after  the  expiration 
of  the  term  of  their  punishment." 

It  is  more  than  probable  that  this  law  was  known  by  1790  to  the 
Pennsylvania  Quakers,  and  that  it  was  a  material  guide  in  the 
establishing  of  the  first  State  prison  of  Pennsylvania.  Moreover, 
we  find  in  Howard's  ''Account  of  the  Principal  Lazarettos  in 
Europe,"  published  in  London  in  1789,  the  following  analysis  of 
the  receptivity  of  desperate  convicts  to  humane  methods,  which 
must  have  struck  a  most  responsive  chord  in  the  hearts  of  such 
men  as  Lownes  and  Bradford: 

"There  is  a  mode  of  managing  some  of  the  most  desperate  convicts  with 
ease  to  yourself,  and  advantage  to  them.  Many  such  are  shrewd  and  sensi- 
ble. Let  them  be  managed  with  calmness,  yet  with  steadiness.  Show  them 
that  you  have  humanity,  and  that  you  are  to  make  them  useful  members  of 
society;  and  let  them  see  and  hear  the  rules  and  orders  of  the  prison,  that 
they  may  be  convinced  that  they  are  not  defrauded  in  their  provisions  or 
clothes,  by  contractors  or  jailors. 

"When  they  are  sick,  let  them  be  treated  with  tenderness.  Such  conduct 
would  prevent  mutiny  in  prisons,  and  attempts  to  escape;  which  I  am  fully 
persuaded  are  often  owing  to  prisoners  being  made  desperate,  by  the 
profaneness,  inhumanity  and  ill  usage  of  their  keepers.'"* 

There  were,  apparently,  rather  close  relations  between  the  Phila- 
delphia Society  and  John  Howard.     On  January  14,  1788,  the 

*  Bradford.     Enquiry. 

^  Howard.     Account,  etc.,  p.  222. 


History  of  American  Prisons  35 

Society  wrote  to  Howard,  sending  him  a  copy  of  their  constitution, 
and  asking  communications  from  Howard  on  the  designs  of  the 
Society.  .  .  .  Howard  expressed  himself  in  one  of  his  public 
works  to  the  effect  that  he  wanted  in  England  a  Society  like  that 
of  Philadelphia,  and  that  he  would  subscribe  £500  to  it,  if  other 
annuities  were  obtained. 

An  illuminating  statement  was  made  some  thirty  years  later,  in 
1821,  by  a  Vermont  lawyer,  Daniel  Chipman,  relative  to  the  reform 
movement  of  the  period  we  are  now  considering :  * 

**The  penitentiary  system  was  introduced  into  the  United  States  when 
there  was  a  rage  for  improvement.  It  was  supposed  by  many,  that  the  world, 
or  rather  some  individuals,  had  been  suddenly  enlightened;  that  the  dictates 
of  experience  were  only  so  many  more  obstacles  to  the  perfectibility  of  human 
nature,  of  which  they  talked  so  much,  and  to  which  they  really  believed 
they  had  arrived ;  and  that  they  could,  by  a  mighty  effort,  bring  the  darkened 
and  lagging  world  up  to  their  own  elevation.     .     .     . 

"The  projectors  of  the  penitentiary  system  were  peculiarly  exposed  to 
an  enthusiasm  which  led  them  to  expect  beneficial  effects,  which  could 
never  be  realized.  Every  feeling  of  humanity  was  enlisted  —  it  was  so 
pleasant  and  satisfying,  to  think  not  only  of  saving  the  life  of  the  offender, 
but  of  reforming  him,  and  restoring  him  to  society  a  useful  member.  It  was 
also  calculated  that  the  punishment  would  strike  a  dread  upon  the  vicious, 
equal  to  an  ignominious  death  upon  the  scaffold". 

Now,  Daniel  Chipman  wrote  the  above  lines  when  the  first  prison 
system,  undertaken  in  high  philanthropic  enthusiasm,  had  broken 
down  deplorably,  and  when  there  was  actual  and  serious  thought 
of  reverting  by  law  and  by  practice  to  the  old  sanguinary  and 
capital  punishments  once  more.    He  wrote: 

**This  day  of  enthusiasm  (above  described)  has  passed  away,  and  we  find 
ourselves  in  the  position  in  which  imperfect  man  has  ever  been;  knowing 
but  very  little  which  it  is  useful  to  know,  but  what  was  known  before;  and 
indeed,  it  requires  labor  to  keep  the  stock  good,  if  I  may  so  say,  and  transmit 
as  much  to  posterity  as  we  might  learn  from  those  who  have  gone  before  us". 

Yet,  in  the  pessimistic  reasoning  of  the  ''hard-headed'*  New 
Englander  from  the  Green  Mountains,  writing  almost  in  phrases 
that  to-day  can  still  be  frequently  heard,  there  was  at  least  a  partial 
fallacy.  We  shall  very  likely  come  to  believe,  as  we  pursue  this 
study,  that  the  early  penal  philosophy  of  the  Philadelphia  group 
was  ''before  its  time,"  and  consequently  could  not  last,  but  we 
shall  also  see  that  it  was  not  solely  the  enthusiasm  or  the  visionary 
nature  of  the  early  reformers,  or  their  belief  in  the  perfectibility 
of  human  nature  that  brought  about  the  collapse  of  the  first  prison 
system.  Failure  came  quickly  enough  from  the  combination  of  a 
number  of  causes,  among  which  were  politics,  the  withdrawal  of  the 
originators  of  the  movement  from  further  active  participation' 
in  its  continuance,  and  above  all,  from  the  fundamental  error  with 
which  the  system  started,  namely,  the  physical  impossibility  of 
meeting  with  adequate  separation  and  classification  of  individuals 
the  increasing  population  of  the  prison.  Architectural  blunders, 
inherent  in  the  housing  provisions  of  the  "Walnut  Street  Prison, 
made  inevitable  the  break-down  and  the  final  disgrace  attendant 
upon  the  first  attempt  to  rationalize  and  humanize  the  treatment 
of  convicts. 

•  Report  on  the  Penitentiary  System.    Appendix,  p.  64. 


36  History  of  American  Prisons 

Yet,  before  that  period  arrived,  with  the  turn  of  the  century, 
we  find  the  prison  presenting  an  example  most  surprising  to  visit- 
ors. Turnbull,  an  interesting  reporter  of  his  own  observations, 
discovered  that  some  of  the  convicts  even  developed  a  real  liking 
for  their  keepers,  which  he  said  was  as  surprising  to  him  as  that 
there  should  be  crocodiles  in  Greenland/ 

A  striking  manifestation  of  a  primitive  form  of  honor  system 
was  recorded  in  1793,  when  on  the  occasion  of  an  epidemic  of  yel- 
low fever,  a  number  of  convicts  responded  to  the  call  for  volunteers 
to  fill  the  places  of  attendants  at  the  Bush  Hill  Hospital.  They 
acquitted  themselves  well,  none  leaving  the  hospital  until  all  were 
ready  to  go  back  to  the  prison,  when  the  need  of  further  service 
was  past.  One  of  the  convicts  subsequently  married  an  attendant 
whom  he  met  at  the  hospital.  Another  convict,  imprisoned  for 
robbery,  was  employed  in  the  transportation  of  provisions  from 
the  city  to  the  hospital,  returning  ultimately  to  prison,  after 
excellent  services.    He  finally  received  a  pardon.* 

A  variant  of  this  tale,  given  by  William  Roscoe  in  1819,^^  in 
his  ** Observations  on  Penal  Jurisprudence,"  was  as  follows: 

**At  the  time  of  the  yellow  fever  at  Philadelphia  in  1793,  great  difficulty 
was  found  in  obtaining  nurses  for  the  sick  at  Bush  Hill  Hospital.  Eecourse 
was  had  to  the  prison;  as  many  of  the  female  convicts  offered  as  were 
wanted;  they  continued  faithful  until  the  dreadful  scene  was  closed.  In 
another  instance,  when  request  was  made  to  them  to  give  up  their  bedsteads 
for  the  use  of  the  sick  at  the  hospital,  they  cheerfully  offered  even  their 
bedding  etc.  When  a  similar  request  was  made  to  the  debtors,  they  all 
refused. '  * 

In  this  same  period  of  the  prison,  we  find  a  trace  of  primitive 
self-government,  developed  by  the  convicts,  who  established  rules 
for  their  more  harmonious  living  with  each  other : 

**One  of  their  principal  regulations  relative  to  cleanliness  was  that  no 
one  should  spit  elsewhere  than  in  the  chimney.  The  punishment  was  simply 
an  exclusion  of  the  convict  from  the  society  of  his  fellow  convicts;  and  this 
is  found  to  be  sufficient."* 

A  century  and  a  quarter  later,  at  Auburn  and  Sing  Sing  Prisons, 
the  self-governing  Mutual  Welfare  League,  composed  of  prisoners, 
employed  somewhat  similar  ostracism  as  their  chief  form  of  punish- 
ment. And,  just  as  in  the  most  modern  days  it  has  been  found  that 
participation  of  the  prisoners  in  their  own  government  has  in  the 
main  resulted  in  decreased  necessity  for  watchfulness  by  guards,  so 
in  the  Walnut  Street  Prison.  In  1794  the  Due  de  La  Rochef  oucauld- 
Liancourt  discovered  that  280  convicts  were  governed  by  only  4 
officers,  the  women  prisoners  being  under  the  control  of  a  woman.^^ 

*'To  be  told  that  a  turnkey  would  be  beloved  by  criminals  would  have  been 
as  much  believed  as  that  Eeynard  would  be  attached  to  a  hound.  I  have  been 
in  a  prison  (Walnut  Street)  where  the  heart  of  the  turnkey  is  like  that  of 
another  man,  and  where  humanity  is  the  standing  order  of  the  day."^"* 

'Turnbull,  p.  35. 

8  Turnbull,  p.  30.  ,      „  i  ^     t^         .     ^        •     t. 

»  Buxton  quoted  in  notes  sur  les  Prisons  de  la  Suisse,  by  Francis  Cunningham. 
Geneve,  1828,  p.  153.  ^  ^      ^         ^„^„  ,r,    *4.4. 

w  Roscoe.     Observations  on   Penal  Jurisprudence,   London,   1819,  p.  57,  footnote. 
"  La  Rochefoucauld-Liancourt. 
«  Turnbull,  p.  35. 


History  of  American  Prisons  37 

The  health  of  the  convicts  was  excellent.  The  physician 's  annual 
bill,  which  before  the  new  system  has  been  $1,280  a  year  —  a  sum 
suggestive  of  the  ancient  possibilities  of  ''honest  graft" — seldom 
exceeded  under  the  new  regime  $160  a  year.^^  The  convicts'  food 
was  held  to  be  adequate.  For  breakfast  and  supper  a  pudding  of 
maize  and  molasses  was  served.  Dinner  consisted  of  one-half  pound 
of  meat,  vegetables  and  one-half  pound  of  bread.^^ 

What  were  the  general  results  of  this  first  prison  system,  in  its 
period  of  rise  and  greatest  efficiency,  from  1790  to  1800?  Sum- 
marizing the  analysis  of  an  early  critic,  in  the  Encyclopaedia 
Americana  of  1832 :  ^^ 

It  saved  the  lives  of  many  who  otherwise  would  have  suffered  capital 
punishment. 

It  saved  many  prisoners  from  the  infliction  of  gross  and  unwise  corporal 
punishment. 

The  new  system  was  much  dreaded  by  the  prisoners,  and  for  a  few 
years  it  seems  to  have  reduced  crime  materially,  and  also  the  number  of 
commitments  to  prison. 

The  labor  of  the  prisoners  relieved  the  State  of  a  considerable  portion  of 
the  expense  of  maintaining  the  prison. 

Many  men,  formerly  lost  to  society,  were  made  useful  and  were  trained  to 
work. 

It  set  an  advanced  standard  of  prison  discipline. 

That  this  radical  attempt  at  the  amelioration  of  the  conditions  of 
prisoners  should  receive  criticism  was  to  be  expected.  Incredulity 
was  expressed  at  the  time  as  to  the  truth  of  the  amazing  statements 
emanating  from  the  friends  of  the  new  system.  It  was  alleged, 
among  other  things,  that  the  convicts  at  Philadelphia  had  been 
forcibly  tamed  into  going  through  their  routine  like  dumb  wild 
beasts.    But  to  this,  La  Rochef oucauld-Liancourt  replied :  ^^ 

'*  Recall  Doctor  Hunter  of  York,  in  England,  who  of  all  other  physicians 
has  cured  most  lunatics,  by  striking  off  their  chains,  and  leading  them  back 
by  gentleness  and  reason.  No  one  needs  to  be  shocked  by  the  comparison  of 
fool  and  criminal.*' 

12  La  Rochefoucauld-Liancourt. 

"Turnbull,  p.  30. 

1*  Encyclopedia  Americana,  Vol.  X,  1832,  p.  342. 

"  Voyage,  p.  43. 


CHAPTER  V 


THE  BREAKDOWN 

By  the  year  1800  there  was  apparent  an  ominous  relaxation  of 
discipline  within  the  Philadelphia  prison.  The  prison  society 
warned  against  any  abatement  of  any  part  of  the  period  of  solitary 
confinement,  and  against  increasing  the  hitherto  infrequent  at- 
tempts of  the  board  of  managers  to  secure  pardons  for  deserving 
prisoners.^ 

These  warnings  deserve  our  attention.  The  Friends  introduced 
rigid  severity  into  the  prison  for  those  who  had  forfeited  the  right 
to  benevolent  clemency.  Just  as  mildness  was  to  be  a  persuasive 
factor  in  the  reform  of  the  budding  criminal,  so  was  a  drastic  soli- 
tary confinement  to  deter  by  its  rigors  the  dense  and  calloused 
malefactor  from  further  crime.  These  two  extreme  methods  were 
thus  employed  to  achieve  the  same  end,  the  further  cessation  of 
criminal  acts. 

At  the  very  outset  of  the  new  methods,  pardons  had  been  prom- 
ised, as  something  to  be  hoped  for  in  return  for  good  labor  and 
good  conduct.  Thus  was  the  ground  laid  for  what  has  always  been 
one  of  the  grievous  abuses,  and  one  of  the  most  ready  temptations 
to  the  breakdown  of  morale,  in  American  prison  administration. 
Freedom  is  the  constant  craving  of  the  prisoner.  The  "intellec- 
tual" and  the  illiterate  will  both  affirm  that  it  is  primarily  the 
loss  of  liberty  that  is  the  chief  punishment  of  the  prison  sentence. 
And,  since  the  prisoner's  mind  is  ever  centered  on  the  day  when 
he  is  to  come  out,  the  pardon  —  and  in  later  years  the  parole  — 
have  been  constant  inducements,  or  constant  possible  means,  to 
stimulating  the  inmate  to  hard  work  and  good  behavior. 

Yet  in  the  granting  of  pardon,  as  an  act  of  grace  and  not  of 
justice,  there  lies  inherent  the  great  possibilities  of  apparent  favor- 
itism. The  fortunate  man  was  lucky  —  the  one  who  did  not  get  a 
pardon  was  discriminated  against,  in  the  opinion  of  the  disap- 
pointed. Politics  could  ' '  get "  to  the  governor  of  the  State,  for  it 
was  only  by  the  governor  that  a  pardon  could  be  given.  And  in 
the  first  century  of  our  American  prison  systems,  when  as  yet  the 
indeterminate  sentence  had  not  placed  upon  the  prisoner  a  con- 
siderable responsibility  for  his  own  release  from  prison  through  his 
own  good  conduct  and  good  work,  it  was  the  governor's  pardon, 
that  was  the  only  means  of  earlier  emergence  from  the  bastile-like 
prison. 

Hence  the  abuse  of  the  pardoning  power  was  to  become  flagrant 
in  many  States.  A  reasonable  incentive  when  sparingly  used,  and 
when  grounded  in  justice  and  legitimate  mercy,  pardons  became 
only  too  often  a  sop  to  the  discouraged  convicts,  a  method  of 
achieving  outward  order  in  the  prison  by  easy  means,  and  they 

1  Vaux,  pp.  31flf. 

[38] 


History  of  American  Prisons  39 

were  fundamentally  a  body-blow  at  the  efficacy  of  the  penal  law, 
which  prescribed  a  definite  duration  of  sentence,  only  to  be  vitiated 
by  the  interposition  of  the  pardoning  power,  often  within  a  space 
of  time  that  tended  to  make  the  sentence,  the  courts  and  the  pur- 
poses of  the  prison  appear  absurd.  The  strength  of  the  pardoning 
power  lay  in  its  opportunity  to  provide  an  incentive  to  prisoners 
to  behave  and  to  work.  The  weakness  of  the  pardoning  power  lay 
in  its  ready  and  tempting  abuse. 

The  chief  cause  of  the  ultimate  demoralization  of  the  Walnut 
Street  Prison  system  lay,  however,  in  the  increasingly  crowded 
condition  of  the  institution.  Persistent  increase  of  commitments  to 
the  prison  broke  the  system  down.  Much  of  the  success  of  the 
system  lay  in  the  personal  attention  that  could  be  given  to  prisoners 
by  humanely  minded  officers.  This  was  possible  in  a  prison  of 
small  numbers.  But,  whereas  in  1793  the  commitments  to  the 
prison  had  been  but  43,  in  1801  the  commitments  had  risen  to 
approximately  150,  with  no  increased  accommodations  in  shops 
or  cells.  Moreover,  this  prison  was  the  sole  place  of  confinement 
in  the  entire  State  for  convicts.  In  addition,  the  substitution  of 
solitary  confinement  for  the  death  penalty  was  increasing  not  only 
the  number  of  commitments  to  the  prison,  but  also,  naturally,  was 
increasing  the  number  of  prisoners  in  the  institution,  because  many 
of  the  terms  of  the  prisoners  were  long.^ 

Moreover,  the  number  of  ** vagrants"  was  increasing.  There  was 
also  much  more  crime,  apparently,  in  the  city  than  in  the  early 
years  of  the  prison.  Probably  the  institution  was  no  longer  an 
object  of  alarm  among  the  criminals  *'on  the  outside."  Familiar- 
ity had  bred  contempt.  The  natural  growth  of  the  city  and  State 
population  was  bringing  its  proportional  increase  to  the  prison. 
A  larger  jail  population  meant  increased  administrative  difficulties, 
both  in  lodging  the  prisoners  and  in  working  them.  Silence  and 
good  order,  at  the  prescribed  hours,  could  be  preserved  only  with 
greater  difficulty.  The  natural  tendency  of  the  administration  was 
to  relax,  and  then  to  allow  the  discipline  to  slump.  The  expenses 
of  the  prison  increased,  both  through  the  numerical  increase  in 
population,  and  because  the  consequent  labor  output  was  hindered 
by  inmate  congestion.  Labor  became  less  productive.  Arrange- 
ments for  the  disposal  of  the  manufactured  product  were  less  read- 
ily  made.  There  was  an  outbreak  of  jail  fever  in  1802.  There 
must  be  additional  buildings,  or  a  new  prison.  Even  the  present 
buildings  were  of  faulty  construction. 

The  violent  political  strife  in  the  city  had  its  effect  upon  the 
personnel  and  the  morale  of  the  board  of  managers  of  the  prison. 
Party  politics  led  to  the  replacement,  by  other  persons,  of  the 
original  Quakers  upon  the  board.  The  Philadelphia  Society  for 
Alleviating  the  Miseries  of  Public  Prisons  became  gradually  no 
longer  an  intimate  co-operator  with  the  prison  board  of  managers, 
but  an  organization  of  protest  and  of  opposition,  as  the  policies 

«  Vaux,  p.  31ff. 


40  History  of  American  Prisons 

of  the  prison  changed.*  Undoubtedly,  the  personal  devotion  of 
the  early  members  of  the  board  ceased  to  control  the  affairs  of  the 
institution. 

Some  physical  alleviation  came,  for  a  time,  when  the  Bridewell 
was  built,  on  Mulberry  and  Broad  streets.^  To  this  institution 
were  sent  henceforth  those  lesser  offenders  whom  we  to-day  classify 
as  misdemeanants,  or  as  violators  of  local  ordinances.  Nevertheless, 
the  Walnut  Street  Prison  continued  to  be  congested  with  felons, 
for  from  18U7  on,  the  convict  population  increased  out  of  all 
proportion  to  the  increase  of  the  State's  population.  The  methods 
of  the  government  of  the  prison  underwent  many  changes.  Shift- 
ing of  managers  and  officers  was  frequent.  Laxity,  favoritism,  and 
politics  continued.  Responsibility  for  administration  was  divided. 
The  labor  of  the  prisoners  was  increasingly  exploited  to  the  detri- 
ment of  the  possibilities  of  reformation. 

The  former  rigorous  system  of  seclusion  of  the  more  hardened 
prisoners  was  relaxed  or  abandoned.  The  frequent  recommenda- 
tions of  the  boards  of  managers  for  the  pardon  of  prisoners  became 
a  serious  abuse,  and  those  who  had  been  judicially  committed  to 
suffer  the  greatest  punishment  generally  gained  ultimately  a  par- 
don. Convicts  were  discharged  from  the  prison  without  money  or 
friends,  and  in  many  instances  soon  followed  the  line  of  least 
resistance,  or  of  actual  temptation,  and  reverted  to  crime.^°  Of 
451  convicts  in  the  Walnut  Street  Prison  in  January,  1817,  162 
had  been  previously  convicted  or  pardoned. 

It  was  a  time  of  increasing  discouragement  for  the  friends  of 
a  reformed  prison  discipline,  but  they  were  not  shaken  in  their 
belief  as  to  the  validity  of  the  principles  they  had  espoused.  By 
1817,  the  Philadelphia  Society  was  forced  to  announce  that  the 
demoralization  of  the  now  famous  system  had  proceeded  so  far 
that  10  to  40  prisoners  were  lodged  in  rooms  18  feet  square,  and 
that  the  prison  had  already  begun  to  assume  the  character  of  a 
European  prison,  and  that  instead  of  being  longer  a  school  of 
reformation,  it  was  now  a  seminary  of  vice.^  The  solitary  cells 
were  wholly  abandoned  before  the  year  1820.^ 

In  this  period  the  Society's  activities  took  on  several  broader 
aspects.  There  was  correspondence  with  the  executives  of  peniten- 
tiaries in  other  States;  also  with  the  London  Society  for  the 
Improvement  of  Prison  Discipline,  relative  to  the  failure  of  the 
Walnut  Street  Prison  system.  The  Society  was  planning  for  a 
house  of  reformation  for  juvenile  offenders,  seeking  thus  to  elimin- 
ate them  from  the  prisons  where  adults  were  confined  —  a  move- 
ment that  found  its  fruition  first  in  New  York  city  in  1824  and 
in  Philadelphia  in  1828.  The  Society  also  planned  an  asylum 
for  the  temporary  employment  of  convicts  discharged  from  prison 
or  jail  without  employment,  but  this  movement  does  not  seem  to 
have  eventuated  in  a  building.^ 

3  Life  of  Thomas  Eddy,  p.  204. 

*  Vaux,  p.  39. 

"  Roscoe's  Inquiry.     Appendix,  p.  23. 

8  Julius.     Sittleche  Zusbaende,  Vol.  II,  p.  125. 

»  Vaux,  p.  46. 

10  Vaux,  p.  57. 


History  of  American  Prisons  41 

The  period,  from  the  standpoint  of  prison  progress,  became  cru- 
cial. The  danger  of  a  complete  breakdown  of  humane  principles 
and  beneficent  legislation  was  a  real  one.  In  this  crisis,  the  Prison 
Society  urged,  in  1818,  that  there  be  erected  in  the  State  two 
penitentiaries,  one  in  the  eastern  and  one  in  the  western  part  of 
Pennsylvania.  This  proposal  was  adopted  by  the  Legislature  of 
1818,  which  authorized  the  establishment  of  a  new  prison  in 
Pittsburg,  on  a  new  basis  of  construction.  The  plan  here  adopted 
became  later,  in  Pennsylvania,  of  the  highest  importance  and  should 
be  especially  noted.  The  prison  was  to  be  so  designed  that  not 
only  should  each  prisoner  be  in  solitary  confinement  during  his 
incarceration,  but  he  should  also,  throughout  his  entire  prison  term, 
be  without  work?  The  act  of  1818  also  authorized  the  sale  of  the 
Walnut  Street  Prison,  and  the  erection  of  a  new  prison  in  Phila- 
delphia, on  the  same  general  plan. 

We  meet  here  developing  the  famous  and  fearfully  drastic 
principle  of  imprisonment  in  solitude  without  work,  which,  sanc- 
tioned by  leading  philanthropists  of  the  times,  shows  to  what 
desperate  straits  of  thinking  and  of  penal  philosophy  the  abhorrent 
disintegration  of  their  first  prison  system  had  brought  them.  It 
was  a  leap  into  an  unknown  possible  method  of  saving  the  ^* cause.'* 
To  us  of  to-day  there  would  seem  to  be  hardly  a  severer  punishment 
than  continued  solitary  confinement  without  employment,  or  one 
more  fruitless  of  good  results.  Indeed,  we  should  confidently  expect 
degeneracy,  insanity  and  general  collapse  of  the  individual  to  follow 
in  time.  We  shall  see  what  the  actual  results  were  in  Pennsylvania. 
Yet  the  Philadelphia  Society  believed  that  in  that  direction  lay 
reformatory  possibilities. 

William  Roscoe  of  Scotland  was  an  attentive  student  of  the 
development  of  penal  philosophy  in  the  United  States  and  espe- 
cially in  Philadelphia.  In  his  **  Additional  Observations  on  Penal 
Jurisprudence,"  published  in  1823,  he  gives  what  may  have  been 
the  echo  of  an  ingenious  argument  in  favor  of  solitary  confinement 
without  labor :  ' '  Since  the  labor  of  prisoners  is  not  profitable,  there 
will  be  no  loss  but  perhaps  a  gain  in  keeping  them  in  solitary  con- 
finement without  labor.  And  since  work  diminishes  to  a  very  great 
degree  the  tediousness  of  confinement,  and  thus  mitigates  the  pun- 
ishment, it  may  become  a  question  whether  work  ought  not  to  be 
abandoned  altogether  except  as  an  indulgence  to  the  prisoner. ' '  * 

Doctor  James  Mease,  an  authority  in  Philadelphia  on  prison 
matters  at  this  period,  wrote : 

**The  only  good  effect  which  religious  public  exercises  have  on  convicts  is 
in  keeping  them  quiet,  and  inducing  them  to  hope  for  a  mitigation  as  to  the 
period  of  confinement,  by  observing  the  religious  routine  prescribed.  Eeforma- 
tion  is  out  of  the  question.  They  are  'desperately  wicked^,  and  there  is 
nothing  left  for  us  but  to  frighten  them  away  from  the  land,  or  to  send 
them  to  distant  sections  of  the  globe.  Solitary  confinement  will  have  the 
effect  first  mentioned;  whether  I  shall  succeed  in  persuading  any  of  our 
legislatures  to  try  transportation  remains  to  be  ascertained. "  ^^ 

'  Vaux. 

■Roscoe.    Additional  Observations  on  Penal  Jurisprudence,  1823. 

"Roscoe.     Body  and  Appendix. 


42  History  of  American  Prisons 

The  fearful  conditions  in  the  local  prison  may  well  have 
stampeded  them,  so  to  speak,  into  the  adoption  of  the  above  stand- 
point. They  were  swung  into  an  extreme  position  by  the  occur- 
rences in  the  Walnut  Street  prison,  thus  described  in  a  legislative 
document  in  1821 : 

'*  There  were  in  confinement,  on  the  first  of  January,  424  men  and  40 
women  convicts.  For  want  of  room  to  separate  them,  the  young  associate 
with  the  old  offenders;  the  petty  thief  becomes  the  pupil  of  the  highway 
robber;  the  beardless  boy  listens  with  delight  to  the  well-told  tale  of  daring 
exploits,  of  hoary-headed  villiany;  and  from  the  experience  of  age  derives 
instruction,  which  fits  him  to  be  a  pest  and  a  terror  to  society.  Community 
of  interest  and  design  is  excited  among  them,  and  instead  of  reformation, 
ruin  is  the  general  result." 

In  short,  the  position  relative  to  prisons  was  approximately  that 
preceding  the  first  reform  developments  between  1787  and  1790, 
except  that  humane  methods  had  been  tried,  and  by  caustic  critics 
might  have  been  cited  as  one  of  the  causes  of  breakdown.  The 
pendulum  was  ready  to  swing  to  an  opposite  extreme.  Again  the 
Philadelphia  Society  felt  in  duty  bound  to  devise  a  new  system  of 
prison  administration. 


CHAPTER  VI 


NEWGATE  PRISON  IN  NEW  YORK 

In  the  years  1794  and  1795,  Thomas  Eddy,  a  New  York  philan- 
thropist and  Quaker,  visited  the  Walnut  Street  Prison  several 
times  for  purposes  of  study.  A  prison  was  being  planned  for  the 
State  of  New  York.  The  New  York  Quakers  had  heard  of  the 
remarkable  success  of  the  Philadelphia  prison.  In  the  year  1788, 
thirteen  crimes  were  still  punishable  by  death  in  New  York.  Even 
felonies  that  for  the  first  offense  were  punishable  by  fine,  imprison- 
ment or  corporal  punishment,  were,  on  conviction  of  a  second 
offense,  followed  by  the  death  penalty.  The  capital  crimes  at  the 
time  were : 

Treason,  murder,  rape,  sodomy,  burglary,  robbery,  arson,  maiming  and 
wounding,  forgery,  counterfeiting. 

Many  of  these  crimes  were  capital  only  in  certain  more  serious 
forms. 

Thomas  Eddy  was  often  in  the  later  years  of  his  life  called  the 
* '  John  Howard  of  America. "  ^  He  was  the  dominant  figure  in  the 
introduction  of  the  humane  methods  of  prison  discipline  into  New 
York.  He  was  a  business  man,  and  a  philanthropist  who  devoted 
his  life,  so  far  as  his  means  would  permit,  to  works  of  charity.  He 
was,  apparently,  the  first  American  philanthropist  to  urge  the 
erection  of  prisons  in  which  all  prisoners  should  be  lodged  in 
separate  cells.^  His  vision  of  a  reasonable  and  humane  prison 
system  for  New  York  led  him,  six  years  after  the  establishment  of 
the  first  State  prison  in  New  York,  to  recommend  for  the  city  of 
New  York  the  erection  of  a  prison  with  a  cell  for  each  prisoner.  He 
recommended  for  each  county  of  the  State  the  establishment  of 
similar  prisons.  But  at  the  time  of  urging,  and  later  of  designing, 
the  first  New  York  State  prison,  Eddy  had  not  come  to  recognize 
the  imperative  necessity  of  providing  a  separate  cell  for  each  pris- 
oner, or  of  providing  for  the  ultimate  serious  increase  in  the 
prison  population,  and  so  the  New  York  prison  fell  at  last  into  the 
same  deplorable  plight  as  the  prison  in  Walnut  street. 

**The  plan  of  the  present  prison  (the  State  Prison)  was  entirely  my  own, 
and  though  I  visited  Philadelphia  and  examined  many  of  Howard's  plans 
and  was  furnished  with  several  by  William  W.  Pitt,  a  member  of  Parliament 
from  Dorchester,  of  prisons  in  England,  yet  a  most  striking  error  was  com- 
mitted —  it  should  have  contained  500  rooms,  7  feet  by  9,  to  keep  the 
prisoners  separate  at  night." 

Eddy  was  a  most  diligent  student  of  penal  principles.  His  own 
philosophy  of  criminal  treatment  was  based  upon  Beccaria,  Montes- 
quieu, Penn,  Howard  and  other  writers.**  He  sought  a  system  of 
penal  treatment  that  would  be  both  disciplinary   and  humane. 

1  Life  of  Thomas  Eddy,  p.  41. 

2  Same,   p.   76. 
*  Same,  p.  57. 

[43] 


44  History  of  American  Prisons 

With  European  philanthropists  he  maintained  a  diligent  corre- 
spondence, and  while  receiving  the  documents  sent  him  in  abund- 
ance on  European  charitable  and  correctional  activities,  he 
exchanged  persistently  American  publications  with  his  European 
friends.  Without  question,  he  contributed  much  in  this  manner  to 
establish  the  cross-currents  of  penological  influence  between  Europe 
and  America  that  marked  the  first  thirty  years  of  the  nineteenth 
century. 

In  1796,  Eddy  induced  General  Philip  Schuyler,  a  senator  of 
New  York,  and  Ambrose  Spencer  to  introduce  into  the  Legislature 
at  Albany  a  bill  ''for  making  alterations  in  the  criminal  law  of 
the  State,  and  the  erecting  of  State  prisons."  By  the  passage  of 
this  bill  in  March,  1796,  a  radical  amelioration  of  the  penal  code 
was  effected.  Only  two  capital  crimes,  murder  and  treason,  were 
retained.®'  ^  And,  as  in  Philadelphia,  so  now  in  New  York  a 
prison  system  must  be  devised  and  installed. 

With  an  imitativeness  characteristic  of  the  early  American  States 
in  penal  matters,  New  York  adopted  almost  bodily  the  Philadelphia 
system.  And,  for  the  first  time,  a  prison  was  designed  "to  order,'' 
to  fit  the  new  penal  code  and  prison  discipline. 

The  building  commission  and  the  first  board  of  governors  of  the 
prison  were  composed  mainly  of  Quakers.^  Indeed,  Eddy  was 
said  to  have  built  the  prison,  and  he  became  its  first  warden. 
During  1796  and  1797  the  State  erected  on  Greenwich  street,  about 
two  miles  from  the  New  York  City  Hall,  and  where  now,  only  a 
block  away,  the  Christopher  Street  Ferry  slip  stands,  a  prison, 
on  the  east  bank  of  the  Hudson  River,  which  was  called  Newgate, 
after  the  famous  London  prison.  To-day  the  remains  of  a  brewery 
occupy  the  site  of  the  ancient  prison.  Massive  walls  surrounded 
the  four  acres  of  prison  land.  Within  these  walls  rose  a  building 
204  feet  long  and  two  stories  high.  From  each  end  of  this  edifice 
there  extended  at  right  angles,  toward  the  Hudson,  a  wing  contain- 
ing rooms  for  prisoners,  and  again  from  each  of  these  wings  a 
further  wing,  in  the  same  direction,  each  containing  seven  solitary 
cells.  Back  toward  the  river,  and  parallel  with  the  main  building, 
was  a  two-story  structure,  200  feet  long,  and  two  stories  high, 
containing  the  workshops.  In  the  central  yard  was  a  substantial 
vegetable  garden.  The  first  prisoners  were  admitted  on  November 
28,  1797.^     The  prison  cost  when  completed  about  $200,000.^ 

The  chief  characteristic  of  this  prison  was  its  54  rooms,  each 
room  measuring  12  by  18  feet,  sufficient  to  accommodate  in  each 
case  8  persons.^  We  see  in  this  arrangement  the  ultimate  doom  of 
the  prison  foreshadowed.  Thomas  Eddy,  writing  prophetically 
even  in  1801,  said : 

"Had  the  rooms  for  the  prisoners  been  so  constructed  as  to  lodge  but 
one    person,    the    chance    of    their    corrupting    each    other    would    have    been 

3  View  of  New  York  State  Prisons. 
^  Corporal  punishments  were  prohibited. 
«  Life  of  Thomas  Eddy,  p.  19. 
'  Account  of  the  State  Prisons. 

*  View  of  New  York  State  Prisons. 

•  Report  of  Society  for  Prevention  of  Pauperism,  p.  19. 


History  of  American  Prisons  45 

diminished,  and  escapes  would  have  been  more  difficult.  The  prison  need 
not,  in  that  case,  have  been  made  so  strong  or  so  expensive.  Absolute 
reliance  ought  not  to  be  placed  on  the  strength  of  any  prison.  Nothing  will 
probably  prevent  escapes  but  the  unremitting  vigilance  of  the  keepers,  and 
a  strict. watch  day  and  night.''" 

Eddy's  vision  was  clear  upon  two  points.  Ultimately  the  disci- 
pline of  the  prison  would  require  the  separation  of  prisoners  from 
each  other,  and  secondly,  prisons  were  safe  about  in  proportion 
to  the  success  of  the  methods  of  prison  discipline  employed,  and  not 
in  proportion  to  the  stone  and  iron  of  the  structure.  In  1910, 
Joseph  P.  Scott,  long  the  superintendent  of  Elmira  Reformatory, 
stated  to  the  writer  that  the  weakest  prison,  structurally,  is  the 
strongest,  because  of  the  necessity  of  unremitting  vigilance  of 
supervision.  And  in  those  prisons  that  to-day  utilize  the  methods 
of  self-government  or  of  the  honor  system,  the  safety  of  the  prison 
rests  less  than  ever  upon  structural  strength,  and  more  than  ever 
upon  the  ethical  responsibilities  of  the  inmates. 

The  bulk  of  the  inmate  population  of  the  New  York  Newgate 
was,  therefore,  to  be  lodged  in  large  night-rooms,  while  only  those 
condemned  to  separate  confinement  or  under  punishment  for  prison 
offenses  were  to  occupy  the  solitary  cells.  In  the  large  rooms,  two 
persons  slept  in  each  bed,  an  unspeakably  demoralizing  practice 
in  many  institutions.^^  Prisons  are  under  any  circumstances  the 
centers  of  abnormal  life,  and  the  proximity  of  two  prisoners,  when 
not  under  supervision,  and  not  restrained  by  strong  motives  of 
honor,  is  recognized  by  intelligent  prison  executives  as  predisposing 
to  vice  and  degradation. 

The  beds  at  Newgate  were  made  of  tow  cloth,  stuffed  with  straw, 
enclosed  in  a  kind  of  wooden  frame  or  box  that  folded  up  during 
the  day.  The  living  rooms  were  located  on  each  side  of  a  central 
corridor.  From  their  iron-grated  windows  the  prisoners  gained 
views  of  the  green  fields  and  of  the  river.  The  keeper  and  his 
family  resided  in  the  central  building. 

The  custom,  at  this  time  begun,  of  thus  forcing  the  chief  officer 
of  the  prison  to  be  housed  at  the  prison  has  endured  to  this  day. 
In  the  earlier  systems  of  prison  discipline,  we  shall  find  there  were 
frequent  emergencies  such  as  seemingly  to  require  the  warden  to 
be  constantly  on  hand  to  check  riots  or  to  enforce  discipline.  In 
later  days,  with  the  advent  of  more  reformatory  measures,  the 
ijustom  of  housing  the  warden  and  his  family  at  the  prison  has 
still  endured.  Only  in  most  recent  times  has  it  been  realized  that 
the  warden  deserves  the  same  opportunity  that  other  officers  of 
the  prison  have  to  get  away  from  the  prison  for  a  certain  number 
of  hours  a  day.  The  injustice  to  the  warden's  family,  and  to  the 
warden  himself,  of  enforced  constant  proximity  to  the  prison  atmos- 
phere becomes  more  apparent,  and  the  emergencies  that  require  the 
presence  of  a  warden,  or  control  by  brute  force,  become  increasingly 
rare. 

The  prisoners  at  Newgate  ate  their  meals  in  silence  in  the  cor- 
ridor, or  in  a  dining  room,  at  large  tables.    We  shall  see  throughout 

"  Account  of  state  Prisons,  p.  18. 
"Account  of  State  Prisons,  p.  18. 


46  History  of  American  Prisons 

the  nineteenth  century  almost  inflexible  adherence  to  the  principle 
of  silence  at  meals  in  prison,  and,  with  the  advent  of  the  Auburn 
system  from  1823  on,  silence  at  all  times  when  prisoners  are  in 
contact  with  each  other.  The  principle  of  silence  as  a  penological 
means  of  discipline  we  shall  discuss  at  length  in  connection  with 
the  establishment  of  the  Auburn  system  of  prison  management. 

Special  attention  was  given  in  the  New  York  prison  to  the  dietary 
and  to  the  cost  of  food,  Count  Rumf ord  's  studies  in  dietetics  being 
regarded  as  authoritative.  In  the  light  of  present  food  prices,  we 
cannot  refrain  from  citing  the  three  following  sample  bills  of  fare 
at  the  New  York  prison  in  1800 :  ^ 

Breakfast,  August  3rd,  1800 

1   peck   of   rye $0  25 

6^   quarts   of  molasses 1  02 

130  pounds  of  bread  of  rye  and  Indian 1  95 

Fuel  used  in  cooking 08 

Total  for  235  persons $3  30 

Dinner,  July  28th,  1800 

17  ox  hearts  $0  93 

7  ox  heads  1  09 

6  lamb  plucks   19 

1  peck  of  potatoes  : 15 

3  pounds  of  Indian  meal  46 

3  pounds  salt  05 

^th   pound   pepper 10 

110  pounds  bread  1  65 

Fuel    224 

Sundry  herbs  from  garden 00 

Total  for  225  persons  $4  45 

Supper,  August  6th,  1800 

36%  pounds  Indian  meal  for  mush  $0  54 

1 1/12  pound  salt  03 

61  pounds  of  bread  91 

2  gallons,  3  quarts,  and  7  gills  molasses  1  79 

Fuel    08 

Total  cost $3  36 


The  dietary  was  changed  somewhat  from  day  to  day,  and  accord- 
ing to  season.  The  inspectors  took  pride  in  their  food  experiments, 
which  they  regarded  as  a  laboratory  contribution  to  the  State's 
knowledge  of  dietetics.^ 

We  have  seen  how  in  Philadelphia  the  prisoners  were  employed 
at  the  Walnut  Street  Prison.  In  every  prison  there  exists  the 
problem  of  properly  employing  the  inmates.  The  abolition  of 
capital  and  sanguinary  public  punishments  suggested  inevitably, 
in  connection  with  imprisonment,  the  necessity  of  employing  labor 
as  a  substitute  for  the  previous  pains  and  tortures.  Work,  which 
is  what  man  lives  by,  has  been  turned,  in  prison,  into  a  punishment 

"Account  of  State  Prison,  pp.  40-41. 
"  Account  of  State  Prison. 


History  of  American  Prisons  47 

in  itself,  and  distorted  often  into  torture.  The  sentencing  to  hard 
labor  has  conventionalized  the  idea  of  the  association  of  work 
within  prison  walls  with  punishment.  Hence  the  reformative  and 
vocational  possibilities  of  the  use  of  work  were  barely  emphasized, 
and  labor,  hard  by  command  of  the  law,  has  been  from  the  first 
assumed  to  be  an  integral  part  of  the  prison  sentence,  and  therefore 
not  carrying  with  it  any  obligation  on  the  part  of  the  State  to 
pay  the  inmate  for  what  he  does.  Labor  was,  in  other  words,  a 
part  of  the  legitimate  sentence  of  the  criminal  to  prison. 

Whatever  the  prisoner  might  thus,  by  his  labor,  earn  for  the 
State  would  reduce  by  so  much  the  expenses  of  the  institution. 
The  hours  of  labor  were  not  a  subject  of  concern  to  the  State.  In 
the  free  life  of  the  ''mechanic,"  labor  from  sun-up  to  sun-down 
was  sufficiently  common  to  cause  similar  rules  within  the  prison  to 
be  considered  not  only  legitimate,  but  self-evident.  The  Newgate 
prison  was  distinctly  in  the  country,  in  unsettled  territory,  and 
away  from  whatever  police  or  military  protection  the  city  might 
otherwise  offer.  Hence,  to  ward  against  the  danger  of  outbreaks 
under  cover  of  the  dark,  it  was  not  deemed  wise  or  safe  to  let  the 
prisoners  out  of  their  rooms  before  six  in  the  morning  in  summer, 
or  before  daybreak  in  winter. 

The  problem  of  employing  the  prisoners  at  Newgate  was  beset 
with  difficulties  from  the  first.  After  four  years  from  the  found- 
ing of  Newgate  in  1801,  the  labor  of  the  inmates  had  not  yet  met 
the  expenses  of  the  institution.  The  first  occupation,  established 
two  years  after  the  opening  of  the  prison,  was  the  making  of  boots 
and  shoes,  which  trade  a  life  prisoner  taught  the  other  inmates. 
Blacksmithing,  the  cutting  of  nails,  carpentry,  weaving,  cooperage, 
and  tailoring  were  other  trades,  in  each  of  which  inmates  super- 
vised the  work  of  others.  All  the  linen  and  woolen  cloth  and  the 
stockings  of  the  convicts,  were  manufactured  in  the  prison.^^ 

The  conditions  in  determining  the  occupations  pursued  were, 
so  far  as  possible: 

Those  requiring  least  capital; 
Those  productive  of  profit; 

Those  most  consistent  with  health  of  the  convicts  and  the  general  security 
of  the  prison. 

A  system  of  crediting  and  debiting  the  inmates  was  introduced 
on  lines  similar  to  the  procedure  in  Walnut  Street  Prison.  On 
discharge,  the  prisoner  was  given  his  net  earnings,  if  in  the  opinion 
of  the  inspectors  he  would  make  good  use  of  the  same.  Otherwise, 
the  earnings  were  calmly  withheld,  an  act  that  surely  must  have 
turned  the  convict  out  into  the  world  with  no  gentle  thoughts 
regarding  the  justice  of  prison  life.  Sometimes  the  payment  of 
earnings  was  delayed  for  three  months,  and  the  discharged  prisoner 
must  at  the  end  of  that  time  bring  a  certificate  from  his  employer 
of  his  industriousness  and  good  conduct.  As  at  Philadelphia,  the 
convict  was  debited  for  his  clothes,  and  the  expenses  of  his  trans- 
portation, and  was  charged  fifteen  cents  a  day  for  board  and 
lodging. 

"Account  of  the  State  Prison. 


48  History  of  American  Prisons 

The  method  adopted  of  witholding  a  portion  of  the  prisoner's 
earnings,  during  a  post-prison  period  of  proving  his  good  conduct 
and  industry,  had  an  element  in  it  of  the  later  methods  of  conduct- 
ing parole,  which  is  the  generally  accepted  term  for  the  period 
of  conditional  release  after  a  term  of  imprisonment,  during  which 
period  the  released  inmate  is  under  the  supervision  of  a  parole 
officer,  and  subject  to  such  regulations  as  the  institution  or  the 
duly  appointed  parole  board  may  set.  Parole  came  into  practice 
in  this  country  with  the  establishment  of  the  indeterminate  sentence 
and  the  State  reformatories.  But,  whereas  under  the  parole  system, 
the  prisoner  released  on  parole  must  satisfy  the  authorities  of  his 
good  conduct  and  his  industry,  it  has  not  been  customary  to 
withhold  from  him  any  part  of  his  earnings  within  the  prison. 
Therefore,  in  the  early  methods  of  the  New  York  Newgate,  the 
withheld  earnings  acted  in  a  way  as  under  the  parole  system  the 
rules  and  regulations  of  the  paroling  authorities.  It  tended  to 
keep  the  released  inmate  ^'straight.*' 

The  State  of  New  York,  by  introducing  industries  into  Newgate, 
went  thus  into  the  business  of  manufacturing  for  the  ''open  mar- 
ket ' ' —  a  system  which  in  later  years  was  called  the  ' '  State  Account 
System."  The  prison  bought  the  raw  materials,  made  them  up 
by  the  labor  of  prisoners,  and  sold  them  without  the  intervention 
or  assistance  of  contractors  or  middlemen.  The  board  of  directors 
— '  *  Inspectors ' ' —  were  empowered  to  employ  the  prisoners,  and  to 
credit  them  for  their  labor,  as  they  might  in  their  discretion  decide. 
A  significant  law  of  1801  provided  that  boots  and  shoes  made  by 
the  convicts  must  be  branded  with  the  words:  "State  Prison.** 
There  lay  probably  in  this  legislation  the  first  feeble  attempts  of 
the  ** honest  mechanics,"  whose  activities  in  later  years  we  shall 
follow  in  detail,  to  reduce  the  newly  threatening  competition  of 
prison-made  goods  with  those  produced  by  so-called  ''free  labor." 
In  1804,  a  further  law  provided  that  not  more  than  one-eighth 
of  the  convicts  should  be  employed  in  the  making  of  boots  and  shoes, 
excluding  women  or  men  who  had  learned  the  trade  before  commit- 
ment. This  was  clearly  a  move  to  limit  the  production  of  a 
commodity  which  could  be  readily  manufactured  in  prison.  The 
female  convicts  occupied  a  separate  wing,  and  were  employed  at 
washing,  spinning  and  weaving. 

The  convicts  were  garbed  in  summer  in  jacket  and  trousers  of 
brown  linen,  and  in  a  similar  but  heavier  costume  in  winter.^^  The 
convict  who  had  previously  served  a  term  in  prison  wore  a  garb 
half  red  and  half  blue.  It  must  have  early  suggested  itself  that 
by  clothing  the  convict  in  a  conspicuous  and  unusual  costume,  he 
would  be  more  easily  distinguished  if  he  should  escape  from  the 
prison.  This  is  probably  mainly  the  origin  of  the  marked  garb 
of  the  convict,  and  the  general  adoption  later  of  the  stripes,  alter- 
nately black  and  white  and  running  on  jacket  and  trousers  in  a 
horizontal  direction. 

The  government  of  the  prison  was  vested  in  a  board  of  seven 
inspectors,  unsalaried,  and  appointed  by  the  governor  and  council. 

"  Account  of  State  Prison,  p.  19ff. 


History  of  American  Prisons  49 

Their  frequency  of  meetings,  and  their  methods  of  visiting  the 
prison,  were  largely  copied  from  the  methods  of  the  Philadelphia 
board.  Certain  State  officials  and  ministers  of  the  Gospel  having 
churches  or  congregations  in  the  neighborhood,  were  eligible  to 
visit  the  prison.^^  We  note  already  a  certain  semi-official  authority 
or  legal  permission  for  specific  persons  not  of  the  prison  administra- 
tion to  visit  the  prisoners.  In  the  earlier  years,  as  in  Philadelphia 
and  at  Newgate,  such  permission  granted  to  the  Philadelphia 
Society  and  to  the  nearby  ministers  was  primarily  for  the  purpose 
of  spiritual  help  to  the  inmates.  The  idea  of  an  outside  body  in- 
specting the  work  of  the  prison  authorities  seemed  not  thus  early 
to  be  planned,  although  later  the  various  prison  associations  and 
prisoners'  aid  organizations  secured  in  some  instances  the  power 
of  inspection  and  of  reporting  to  the  legislature  on  the  conditions 
of  prisons,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Prison  Association  of  New  York, 
founded  in  1844.  We  shall  find  in  the  State  prison  at  Auburn  in 
the  late  twenties  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  question  arising  in 
marked  degree  as  to  the  relation  of  the  prison  visitor,  the  clergy- 
man, to  the  warden  and  to  the  administration  of  the  prison. 

The  chief  officer  of  the  prison  was  the  agent,  who  served  as  finan- 
cial and  industrial  manager.  He  received  a  salary  of  $1,500.  The 
second  in  command  was  the  principal  keeper  (a  name  that  has 
survived  in  many  prisons  to-day,  shortened  in  the  prison  vocab- 
ulary to  *'P.  K."),  who  had  charge  of  the  general  discipline  and 
routine  of  the  institution.  Under  him  were  the  assistant  keepers. 
The  salary  of  the  principal  keeper  was  $875,  including  his  board 
and  the  necessary  apartments  for  himself  and  family." 

One  deputy  keeper  received  about  $400  a  year;  the  assistant 
keepers  $250,  with  diet,  lodging  and  washing." 

By  1815  the  salary  of  the  agent  (warden)  had  been  advanced 
to  $2,000.  The  principal  keeper  still  received  $875,  and  the  addi- 
tional perquisites ;  the  deputy  keeper  received  $600,  and  the  assist- 
ant keepers  $365,  with  meals,  lodging  and  washing.  The  clerks 
received  $600.^ 

Apparently  it  was  at  first  intended  that  the  principal  keeper 
should  command  the  prison  discipline  —  an  office  that  ultimately 
fell  to  the  warden  of  all  prisons.  Here  were  the  attributes  that 
Thomas  Eddy  stated  a  principal  keeper  should  possess  —  a  list  that 
to-day  would  qualify  the  fortunate  possessor  for  positions  paying 
much  more  than  do  many  present-day  wardenships : 

**A  keeper  should  be  a  person  of  sound  understanding,  quick  discernment, 
and  ready  apprehension;  of  a  temper  cool,  equable,  and  dispassionate;  with 
a  heart  warmed  with  the  feelings  of  benevolence,  but  firm  and  resolute;  of 
manners  dignified  and  commanding,  yet  mild  and  conciliating;  a  lover  of 
temperance,  decency  and  order;  neither  resentful,  talkative,  nor  familiar;  but 
patient,  persevering  and  discrete  in  all  his  conduct. 

*' While  the  unhappy  wretches  committed  to  his  care  and  subjected  to  his 
power  are  regarded  as  susceptible  of  being  influenced  by  their  fellow  men, 
and  capable  of  reformation,  he  should  never  treat  them  with  harshness, 
cruelty  or  caprice,  nor  thwart  or  irritate  them  in  trivial  matters;  but  on  all 

«  Account  of  State  Prison,  p.  19ff. 
"  Account  of  the  State  Prison. 
"View  of  the  State  Prison. 


50  History  of  American  Prisons 

occasions,  while  he  makes  himself  feared,  he  should  by  a  mild  and  temperate 
behaviour,  by  visiting  the  sick,  inquiring  into  their  wants,  and  occasionally 
supplying  them  with  little  comforts,  and  speaking  kindly  to  those  at  work, 
endeavor  to  gain  their  affection  and  respect. 

*  *  Though,  in  order  that  he  may  be  on  his  guard  against  their  machinations, 
he  should  consider  them  as  wicked  and  depraved,  capable  of  every  atrocity, 
and  ever  plotting  some  means  of  violence  and  escape;  yet  he  should  always 
be  convinced  of  the  possibility  of  their  amendment,  and  exert  himself  in 
every  way  to  promote  it;  ...  In  the  infliction  of  punishment  he  should 
be  calm  and  inflexible  without  anger,  so  that  he  may  convince  the  offender 
that  he  acts,  not  from  passion  or  vengeance,  but  from  justice. ' '  ^* 

We  see  here  Thomas  Eddy  laying  down  the  first  standards  for  a 
new  profession,  that  of  the  executive  officer  of  a  new  kind  of  insti- 
tution, a  prison,  and  undoubtedly  outlining  in  summarized  form 
his  own  eiforts  as  warden  of  the  institution  to  deal  justly  and 
humanely  with  the  inmates  in  his  charge.  These  are  specifications 
for  a  warden  who  would  govern  his  prison  mainly  through  person- 
ality. No  warden  with  the  above  attributes  could  act  comfortably 
within  the  limits  set  by  hard  and  fast  rules,  nor  would  he  establish 
a  routine.  Breadth  of  vision,  ingenuity,  high-mindedness  and  per- 
severing charity  characterize  this  list  of  human  attributes  presented 
by  Thomas  Eddy.  And  to-day,  in  the  frequent  discussion  in 
conventions  and  conferences  like  the  American  Prison  Association 
and  the  National  Conference  on  Social  Work,  we  find  insistent 
stress  still  upon  the  commanding  role  of  ''personality"  in  the 
management  of  correctional  institutions.  Only  as  late  as  1920  did 
Dr.  Katharine  Bement  Davis,  long  the  superintendent  of  the  New 
York  State  Reformatory  for  Women  at  Bedford  Hills,  and  with 
ripe  experience  in  all  phases  of  work  with  women  offenders,  state 
publicly  that  practically  the  only  permanent  reformations  that  she 
had  observed  in  the  course  of  her  professional  career  had  come 
from  the  influence  of  a  dominant  personality  upon  an  inmate. 

As  in  Philadelphia,  so  at  New  York,  the  effort  was  made  by 
the  first  board  of  managers  to  bar  from  the  prison  all  corporal 
punishments,  nor  were  arms  allowed.  The  keepers  must  bar  pro- 
fanity among  themselves,  and  be  gentlemanly.  The  punishment 
of  the  inmates  was  not  to  be  physical,  but  by  means  of  solitary 
confinement.  Differing  from  the  practice  in  Pennsylvania,  in  New 
York  the  judges  did  not  —  though  the  law  permitted  it  —  commit 
the  convicted  offender  to  solitary  confinement  as  a  part  of  his 
sentence.  The  solitary  cells  were  used,  therefore,  as  punishment 
for  infractions  of  prison  rules.  As  an  inducement  to  good  conduct 
within  the  prison,  well-behaved  inmates  might  see  their  wives  and 
connections  once  in  three  months.^* 

There  was  a  hospital  ward,  with  an  attending  physician,  at  an 
annual  salary  of  $200.  His  assistant,  called  ' '  apothecary, ' '  received 
only  board  and  lodging.  Prisoners  acted  as  nurses.  There  was 
a  chapel  seating  600,  but  up  to  1801  there  was  no  chaplain,  divine 
service  being  conducted  on  the  Sabbath  by  ministers  from  the 
outside. 

"Account  of  State  Prison,  p.  25. 
20  Account  of  State  Prison. 


History  of  American  Prisons  51 

The  law  of  1796  not  only  made  two  crimes  alone  capital,  namely, 
treason  and  murder,  but  it  also  made  punishable  by  life  imprison- 
ment, with  the  additional  penalty  of  hard  labor,  or  solitude,  or 
both,  those  crimes  formerly  designated  as  capital  offenses.  Four- 
teen years  was  the  maximum  term  for  all  first  offenses  above  the 
grade  of  petty  larceny.  For  a  second  offense  in  these  crimes,  the 
penalty  was  increased  to  imprisonment  for  life,  with  hard  labor 
or  solitude.  Lesser  offenses  were  visited  by  imprisonment  not  less 
than  one  year,  or,  for  second  offenses,  up  to  three  years. 

An  escaped  prisoner,  if  recaptured,  must  undergo  twice  the 
period  of  imprisonment  specified  for  the  original  sentence.  An 
escaped  prisoner,  who  on  the  original  commitment  had  been  sen- 
tenced to  life  imprisonment,  and  who  was  again  convicted  of  any 
crime  above  petty  larceny,  was  to  receive  the  death  penalty. 

To  us  of  to-day,  such  long  sentences  will  seem  often  out  of  all 
proportion  severe  and  unjust.  But  we  must  realize  that  they  repre- 
sented the  first  rupture,  in  a  new  republic,  with  a  relatively  general 
use  of  torture  and  capital  punishment  for  similar  offenses.  It 
was  coming  to  be  conceded,  in  an  age  that  proclaimed  all  men  to 
be  born  free  and  equal,  that  even  the  most  wicked  and  despicable 
had  certain  elementary  rights  to  life,  ultimate  liberty,  and  a  mild 
chance  to  be  happy,  and  that  there  rested  on  the  State  an  actual 
obligation  to  amend  the  criminal  as  well  as  to  punish  him.  The 
State  constitutions  of  New  Hampshire  and  Illinois,  for  instance, 
recognized  this  obligation. 

It  is  important  for  us  to  understand  what  *' reformation '  *  im- 
plied, in  this  early  period  of  devoted  effort  to  reform,  when  possible, 
the  convict.  It  meant  primarily  a  religious  and  spiritual  conver- 
sion within  the  prison  house.  This  mundane  life  was  but  the 
threshold  to  either  heaven  or  hell.  If  criminals  were  to  be  saved, 
impressive,  and  when  necessary  stern,  means  were  essential.  Far 
better  to  simulate  by  means  of  a  rigid  but  just  prison  discipline 
and  environment,  for  the  purpose  of  redemption,  even  some  of  the 
impending  tortures  of  the  next  world,  than  to  introduce  and  tolerate 
a  leniency  in  prison  discipline  that  would  lead  to  the  mutual 
corruption  of  prisoners  and  to  the  destruction  of  their  souls. 

Therefore,  it  was  strongly  believed  that  within  these  living  tombs, 
where  silence  and  solitude  should  prevail,  and  where  a  stern  and 
unbroken  routine  should  weigh  impressively  upon  the  prisoner,  he 
would  thus  be  delivered  over  to  reflection,  remorse  and  perhaps 
to  repentance  and  ultimate  reformation.  With  such  methods  of 
mental  and  spiritual  persuasion  could  be  combined  that  arduous 
and  persistent,  soul-mortifying  labor  that  should  teach  daily  the 
Biblical  injunction  that  man  must  earn  his  bread  by  the  sweat  of 
his  brow.  In  short,  whatever  punishments  might  be  visited  upon 
the  guilty  convict  would  be  for  his  own  ultimate  good  and  the 
salvation  of  his  soul. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  the  wickedness  and  the  evil  supposed 
to  be  lodged  in  the  prisoner  were  far  more  keenly  sensed,  far  more 
unquestioningly  believed  in,  than  is  the  case  to-day.  There  was  a 
sharp  cleavage  in  the  public  mind  between  the  good  and  the  bad. 


52  History  of  American  Prisons 

There  was  little  sense  or  theory  of  ''relativity"  in  morals  in  those 
days.  If  the  good  citizen  was  one  of  the  elect,  the  criminal  on  the 
other  hand  was  in  imminent  danger  of  becoming  one  of  the  damned. 
If  the  severe  tortures,  the  mutilation  and  the  deaths  of  previous 
days  were  now  to  be  abandoned  as  salutary  agencies,  not  only  for 
the  protection  of  society,  but  for  the  ultimate  well-being  of  the 
criminal  himself,  there  must  be  devised  adequate  and  intimidating 
substitutes.  And  for  a  community  that  believed  inflexibly  in  the 
existence  of  a  state  in  the  hereafter  of  everlasting  torture  for  evil 
done  in  this  world,  and  unrepented  of,  it  was  surely  not  difficult 
to  concede  and  even  argue  the  propriety  and  necessity  of  severe 
punishments  in  prison  for  evil  done  in  defiance  of  law. 

Even  if  revenge  was  no  longer  to  be  the  aim  of  punishment,  the 
prisoner's  amendment  was  not  the  only  thing  to  be  considered. 
Beccaria  had  recently  written  that  penalties  must  not  be  arbitrary 
but  precise  and  just,  fitting  the  crime.  The  human  mind  strives 
ever  to  achieve  a  just  ratio  between  crime  and  its  punishment. 
W.  S.  Gilbert  interpolated  even  in  light  opera  the  same  striving, 
for  in  the  Mikado's  kingdom: 

**My  purpose  all  sublime 
I  shall  achieve  in  time, 
To  make  the  punishment  fit  the  crime, 
The  punishment  fit  the  crime ! ' ' 

So,  with  the  philosophical  Beccaria  of  the  late  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, grievous  crimes  must  be  attended  by  grievous  penalties.  Above 
all,  the  punishments  must  follow  the  offense  with  certainty.  It  was 
not  the  severity,  but  the  certainty  of  the  punishment  that  would 
reduce  crime  and  deter  criminals. 

Furthermore,  the  criminals  of  the  time  were  not  regarded  as  of 
a  class  to  warrant  much  consideration.  The  public  thought  of 
them  in  terms  of  the  poor  wretches  or  horrible  malefactors  whom 
they  had  seen  exhibited  in  the  places  of  public  punishment.  More- 
over, what  was  at  the  time  analyzed  as  the  "scum  of  Europe"  was 
furnishing  a  high  percentage,  perhaps  a  fourth,  of  the  prison  popu- 
lation; vagrants  and  strangers  from  other  States  were  giving  a 
like  fourth.  The  colored  race  gave  to  the  earliest  prisons  a  propor- 
tion of  inmates  many  times  greater  than  its  proportion  in  the 
general  population  of  the  States.  Only  with  the  Revolution  had 
England  ceased  to  send  white  convicts  to  America.  Slavery  was 
still,  of  course,  an  institution  in  many  States. 

It  is  not  difficult,  therefore,  to  understand  the  humanitarian 
zeal  of  men  like  Caleb  Lownes  and  Thomas  Eddy.  The  prison 
reformers  of  this  early  period  were  constantly  dominated  by  ardent, 
stern  and  sombre  religious  convictions,  and  their  efforts  were  in 
the  last  analysis  religious  and  missionary,  rather  than  social  and 
ethical  alone. 

On  the  other  hand,  close  association  with  prisoners  led  these 
thoughtful  men  to  appreciate  the  powerful  influences  of  social  and 
economic  conditions  in  forming  character  and  in  contributing  to 
individual  downfall.  Gradually,  out  of  the  hour  of  these  prison 
populations,  and  out  of  the  early  hypotheses  of  total  depravity 


History  of  American  Prisons  53 

and  individual  responsibilty,  came  at  last  the  value  realization, 
at  least,  of  the  power  of  social,  industrial  and  mental  factors  in 
leading  men  into  prison. 

And  so,  a  quarter  century  later,  in  1824,  only  a  few  years  before 
his  death,  Thomas  Eddy  wrote  that  the  great  error  of  all  govern- 
ments had  been  in  not  affording  instruction  to  the  lower  class  of 
society,  and  in  inflicting  punishments  often  very  disproportionate 
to  offenses.^^  The  absolutely  arbitrary  injustice  of  the  penal  code 
was  abhorrent  to  him,  whereby  the  difference  between  grand  and 
petty  larceny  —  and  of  a  consequent  sentence  for  years  to  a  State 
prison,  or  a  far  shorter  sentence  to  the  Bridewell  —  depended  upon 
whether  there  was  less  than  $25  or  more  than  $25  in  the  purse  that 
was  stolen  —  the  criminal  knowing  nothing  as  to  the  exact  amount 
in  the  purse,  and  having  the  same  purpose  of  theft,  whatever  the 
Amount  might  be.  So  Eddy  pleaded  for  varying  sentences,  and  the 
practice  of  wide  discretion  by  the  judge.^^ 

As  early  as  1801,  in  his  ''Account  of  the  State  Prison,"  Eddy 
laid  down  the  principle  that  there  were  three  things  to  be  consid- 
ered, in  the  endeavor  to  attain  the  end  of  human  punishment, 
namely,  the  prevention  of  crime : 

Amendment  of  the  offender; 

Deterrence  of  others  from  crime; 

Eeparation  to  society  and  to  the  party  injured. 

The  first  aim  he  regarded  as  the  highest  in  importance.    Justice, 
not  revenge,  was  the  true  foundation  of  the  right  to  punish. 
Eddy  found  three  classes  of  criminals  in  prison : 

Men  grown  old  in  profligacy  and  violence,  unfeeling  and  desperate  offenders, 
who  show  no  signs  of  contrition,  and  yield  little  hope  of  amendment; 

Those  who  in  early  life  have  received  a  moral  and  religious  training,  and 
though  afterwards  led  by  passion  and  evil  example,  still  retain  some  sense  of 
virtue ; 

First  offenders. 

The  most  efficacious  means  of  reformation  Eddy  found  in  regu- 
lar labor  and  exact  temperance.  One-tenth  part  of  the  criminal 
population  Eddy  regarded  as  depraved  and  hardened,  and  so  about 
22  of  the  most  obdurate  criminals  were  separated  from  the  others 
and  worked  in  separate  apartments,  from  which  they  could  not 
emerge,  and  where  they  were  constantly  watched  by  keepers. 

Let  us  return  to  some  details  of  the  early  Newgate  prison.  While 
Eddy  was  warden,  he  published,  in  1801,  an  ''Account  of  the  State 
Prison."  At  this  time,  the  beginning  of  the  ultimate  catastrophe 
was  not  yet  visible.  To  the  meritorious  convicts,  the  three  R's 
were  being  taught  in  the  winter,  and  the  educated  convicts  acted  as 
instructors.  To  enter  the  class  taught  by  a  certain  keeper,  an 
over-stint  of  work  amounting  to  four  shillings  in  value  must  have 
been  done  during  the  week.  Religious  and  moral  instruction  was 
furnished. 

21  Life  of  Thomas  Eddy,  p.  82. 

22  Same,  p.  87. 


54  History  of  American  Prisons 

The  opening  of  the  penitentiary  in  New  York  was  not  followed 
by  any  diminution  in  crime.  Rather  was  there  an  increase,  which 
Eddy  attributed,  not  to  the  reduction  of  severe  penalties,  but 
to  the  rapid  growth  of  New  York's  population  and  wealth,  with 
its  attendant  luxury,  and  its  corruption  of  manners,  and  to  the 
great  number  of  indigent  and  vicious  emigrants  from  Europe  and 
from  the  West   Indies.^ 

From  1797  to  1801  there  were  received  into  the  prison  693 
convicts :  ^* 

Males      Females 

Whites    469  44 

Colored  145  35 

614  79 

Of  these,  there  were  290  '^foreigners,"  the  chief  countries 
represented  being : 

Ireland    117      Germany  18 

England    49      Africa  18 

West    Indies    49 

The  so-called  foreign  population  was,  therefore,  42  per  cent,  of 
the  total  commitments,  and  the  colored  inmates  far  exceeded  the 
proportionate  number  of  colored  population  in  the  State. 

In  all  periods,  those  engaged  in  prison  administration  and  in 
the  treatment  of  the  delinquent  have  sought  the  causes  of  crime. 
Generally,  the  findings  have  been  limited  to  certain  conspicuous 
factors,  which  often  have  been  after  all  only  the  results  of  ante- 
cedent conditions,  and  therefore  not  the  causes  themselves.  Com- 
prehensive studies  of  causes  we  have  not  found  in  this  period.  Eddy 
attributed  to  three  causes  in  particular  the  development  of  crime 
(causes  which  in  each  instance  were  only  manifestations  of  the 
quest  of  pleasure)  : 

Intoxication. 
Horse  Eacing. 
Animal  Baiting. 

The  multiplicity  of  dram  shops  and  taverns  aroused  in  particular 
Eddy 's  ire.  He  felt  that  reformation  would  be  a  long  process,  and 
not  reasonably  to  be  expected  in  less  than  four  or  five  years.  There- 
fore he  held  that  no  pardons  should  be  allowed  in  less  than  from 
four  to  five  years  after  commitment  —  and  in  the  case  of  life 
prisoners,  in  not  less  than  seven  years. 

Thomas  Eddy  thus  early  put  his  finger  upon  one  of  the  chief 
causes  for  the  continuance  of  crime.  If  crime  is  to  be  reduced, 
its  inciting  causes  must  be  reduced.  We  have  already  spoken,  in 
connection  with  the  Walnut  Street  Prison,  of  the  effects  of  the 
abuse  of  the  pardoning  power.  In  New  York,  even  in  the  first 
four  years,  from  1797  to  1801,  27  of  the  outgoing  population  of 

28  Account  of  State  Prison,  p.  68. 
2*  Same,  p.  79. 


History  of  American  Prisons  55 

Newgate  had  been  pardoned.  The  sentences  of  the  convicts  during 
this  same  period  show  how  inevitable  were  to  become  both  conges- 
tion and  the  consequent  free  use  of  pardons : 

Sentences  to  Newgate  Prison,  1797-1801 

Life  77    2  years  6  months  4 

14  years  6    2  years  65 

12  years  1    1  year  6  months  5 

10  years  4    1  year  1  day  22 

7  years  19    1  year  14 

6  years  4   Less  than  1  year 3 

5  years  22                           

4  years  34              Total 344 

3  years  44 

In  short,  life  sentences  had  been  imposed  on  23  per  cent,  of 
those  committed  to  Newgate  Prison,  a  percentage  exceeded  only 
by  those  committed  for  two  years."^ 

The  chief  crimes  during  this  period,  as  indicated  by  the  causes 
of  commitment,  were: 

Grand  larceny   (over  $12^^) 260      Burglary  34 

Petty   larceny   277      Assault  and  battery  20 

Forgery  66      Horse  stealing  15 

It  was  in  this  early  period  that  the  prison  industries  most  nearly 
paid  the  expenses  of  the  prison.  In  1802  the  net  earnings  were 
given  as  $21,874 ;  the  disbursements  for  support  and  clothing,  main- 
tenance of  keepers,  and  transportation  of  convicts  to  the  prison  were 
$22,357.  A  contract  was  entered  into  with  an  outside  manufacturer 
for  the  hiring  of  the  labor  of  a  certain  number  of  inmates  on  boots 
and  shoes,  the  work  to  be  done  within  the  prison.^* 

A  change  in  the  administration  of  the  prison  was  quick  in  coming. 
As  early  as  1800,  the  complexion  of  the  board  of  managers  began 
to  change,  through  the  appointment  of  new  members  for  political 
reasons,  and  the  sagacious  policies  of  the  Quaker  members  began 
to  be  overruled.  In  1803  Thomas  Eddy  found  the  position  of 
warden  intolerable,  and  resigned.^^ 

Of  all  causes  of  failure  of  American  prison  administration,  poli- 
tics may  perhaps  be  placed  first.  A  prison  requires  an  upright, 
humane,  intelligent  and  efficient  management,  and  above  all,  it 
needs  continuity  of  tenure  for  able  officials.  To  those  who  follow 
this  study  of  American  prisons,  the  noxious  influences  of  politics 
will  become  so  often  apparent  as  to  seem  finally  almost  universal. 
The  demoralization  of  the  prisons  through  the  spoils  system 
occurred  repeatedly.  Both  in  Philadelphia  and  New  York,  the 
very  beginnings  of  the  prison  reform  movement  were  frustrated, 
within  a  few  years,  by  the  unintelligent,  if  not  deliberately  inten- 
tional, appointment  of  unfit  managers. 

Thus  did  the  prison,  which  Thomas  Eddy  had  in  large  measure 
built,  and  in  which  he  had  been  the  first  warden,  pass  from  his 
control.  The  prison  had  cost  in  the  original  appropriation 
$208,000.     New  York  lost  in  Eddy's  resignation  a  valuable  man, 

^  Account  of  State  Prison. 

2«  Report  of  Inspectors  for  1803,  p.  1. 

27  Life  of  Thomas  Eddy,  p.  19. 


56  History  of  American  Prisons 

one  who  might,  under  favorable  circumstances,  have  invested  the 
wardenship  of  a  prison  with  a  dignity  and  standing  that  might  have 
had  permanent  effects  later  on.  For  we  learn,  from  ''The  His- 
torical Discourse  of  John  W.  Francis,"  on  November  17,  1857, 
on  a  half  century's  personal  reminiscences,  that  Thomas  Eddy  was 
a  rare  soul : 

''He  was  a  philanthropist  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  term,  free  from  all 
sectional  bias  .  .  .  associated  with  the  Manumission  Society,  the  New 
York  Hospital,  the  Free  School  System,  the  Society  for  the  Reformation  of 
Juvenile  Delinquents,  and  the  most  prominent  individual  to  project  and 
organize  the  Bloomingdale  Hospital  for  the  Insane. 

**His  fiscal  integrity  afforded  a  captivating  illustration  of  his  Christian 
belief.  His  early  career  in  merchandise  proved  disastrous,  and  embarrass- 
ments to  himself  and  friends  for  years  followed.  By  the  simplicity  of  his 
habits  and  a  rigid  economy,  he  was  again  made  whole,  when  he  discharged 
with  fidelity  every  obligation  with  interest. 

"I  always  thought  that  by  this  one  act  he  had  mounted  at  least  a  rung 
or  two  up  Jacob's  ladder." 

Almost  from  the  first,  trouble  occurred  at  times  in  the  matter 
of  discipline.  In  June,  1799,  50  to  60  men  revolted  and  seized 
their  keepers,  and  not  until  the  guards  opened  fire  on  them  with 
ball  cartridge  —  by  which  several  were  wounded  though  none  were 
killed  —  was  the  mutiny  quelled.  In  April,  1803,  40  men  broke 
from  the  prison  into  the  prison  yard,  and  caused  a  fire.  The 
keepers  killed  several  inmates  during  this  riot.  In  May,  1804,  a 
still  more  dangerous  riot  occurred.  The  keepers  were  locked  into 
the  north  wing  of  the  building,  which  was  then  set  on  fire.  A  pris- 
oner who  repented  of  his  act  released  the  keepers.  There  was  a 
building  loss  of  $25,000,  and  many  prisoners  escaped. 

There  were  losses  now  from  bad  debts,  and  a  loss  of  $11,000  on 
the  labor  of  prisoners.  * '  More  room ! ' '  was  the  inspectors '  plea  in 
1806.  The  prison  was  suffering  from  the  indiscriminate  herding  of 
prisoners  in  the  Bridewell.  In  this  local  institution,  which  was 
built  on  the  Common  (where  now  is  City  Hall  Park)  in  1775,  were 
confined  those  convicted  of  small  thefts  and  petty  offenses,  and 
those  awaiting  trial  or  conviction.  The  Bridewell  was  called  **a 
nursery  of  criminals  for  the  State  prison."  It  was  the  jail  for 
New  York  City.^* 

It  was  for  these  prisoners  that  Eddy  urged  in  1804  the  erection 
of  a  new  prison,  with  separate  cells  for  the  solitary  confinement 
of  each  prisoner,  for  periods  not  exceeding  30  days  for  the  lesser 
offenders,  and  from  60  to  90  days  for  the  more  serious  offenders. 
Eddy  urged  that  these  inmates  of  the  Bridewell  should  be  kept  in 
perfect  solitude,  on  spare  diet,  which  would  be  in  his  opinion  a 
course  of  treatment  severer  than  confinement  for  one  or  two  years  in 
the  State  prison.  This  plan  would  also  relieve  the  courts  of  the 
necessity  of  sending  convicts  to  the  State  prison  for  less  than  three 
years. 

Eddy's  project  was  not  realized.  It  was  not  until  1838  that  the 
Bridewell  was  torn  down  —  at  which  time  was  erected  on  the  site 
of  the  Collect  Pond  on  Center  street  the  first  ''Tombs,"  so-called 

28  Account  of  State  Prison,  p.  62. 


History  of  American  Prisons  57 

because  of  the  remarkable  Egyptian  architecture.  In  the  **  Halls 
of  Justice,"  as  the  entire  building  was  called,  the  local  jail  occupied 
a  part. 

Eddy's  plan  is  historically  of  great  interest,  because  it  seems 
to  have  been  the  earliest  project,  in  the  North  Atlantic  States,  for 
a  prison  that  should  be  operated  entirely  on  the  principle  of  sep- 
arate confinement  without  labor.  Eddy  meant  that  the  punishment 
should  be  quick,  severe,  forbidding,  and  soon  ended.  But  the  city 
of  New  York  refused  to  meet  the  total  expense  of  such  a  structure, 
which  the  State  desired  to  load  upon  the  city,  and  so  the  project 
fell  through.  When,  a  score  of  years  later,  solitary  confinement 
without  labor  was  tried  out  in  Auburn  Prison  and  at  the  Western 
Penitentiary  of  Pennsylvania,  it  was  found  to  be  cruel  and 
impracticable. 

By  the  year  1808,  the  pardon  evil  had  obtained  large  sway  at 
Newgate  in  New  York.  Necessity  was  pleaded  as  the  reason  for 
the  regular  practice  of  granting  pardons  to  a  sufficient  number 
of  convicts  to  make  the  total  number  of  discharges  equal  to  the 
commitments  within  the  same  period  to  the  State  prison.  And 
this  vicious  custom  continued  regularly  from  this  time  on. 

An  outgrowth  of  this  oppressive  congestion  was  the  suggestion 
of  the  board  of  inspectors  in  1809,  for  the  first  time,  that  a  second 
prison  be  built,  somewhere  in  the  interior  of  the  State.  It  had 
been  originally  intended,  by  the  law  of  1796,  to  provide  for  two 
State  prisons,  of  which  one  was  to  be  located  at  Albany.  But  the 
plan  was  abandoned,  and  the  entire  appropriation  made  available 
for  the  State  prison  which  was  erected  in  Greenwich. 

By  1814,  citizens  of  New  York  had  become  greatly  alarmed, 
because  groups  of  forty  or  fifty  of  the  * '  best ' '  prisoners  were  being 
pardoned  on  the  occasion  of  the  semi-annual  visits  of  the  judges 
to  the  prison,  and  were  let  loose  at  the  same  time  upon  the  com- 
munity.^** The  evils  arising  from  the  pardoning  power,  as  we  have 
said,  lay  in  the  abuse  and  not  in  the  use  of  this  means  of  grace : 

**A  penitentiary",  wrote  William  Eoscoe  in  1819'^  concerning  the  failure 
of  the  earliest  system  of  American  prison  discipline,  "where  penitence  is 
of  no  avail,  is  a  solecism;  .  .  .if  the  principle  of  pardon  were  abolished, 
these  establishments  would  be  no  longer  places  of  reformation,  but  places 
of  punishment.  The  extension  of  pardon  to  penitent  and  reformed  criminals 
is  not  only  an  act  of  strict  and  unalterable  justice,  but  is  essentially  necessary 
to  the  very  nature  of  a  penitentiary.'* 

The  commissioners  who  in  1817  studied  the  Massachusetts  State 
prison  saw  also  the  necessity  of  a  judicious  exercise  of  the  pardon- 
ing power,  and  stated  that 

''if  it  were  understood  by  the  convicts  that  they  could  free  themselves  from 
confinement  only  by  their  industry,  and  that  their  return  to  society  would 
depend  wholly  upon  their  own  exertions,  a  new  spirit  would  prevail  among 
them,  which  would  ensure  the  performance  of  their  assigned  tasks. ' '  *' 

*'The  most  notorious  felons,''  said  the  Report  of  the  Society 
for  Preventing  Pauperism  in  1822,^'  ''have  again  and  again  been 

2»  Report  of  Society  for  Prevention  of  Pauperism,  p.  16. 

«°  Report  on  Penitentiary  System  of  United  States,  by  Hopkins,  p.  94. 

«i  Roscoe.     Observations,  p.  106. 

*■  Report  of  Commissioners  to  Massachusetts  Legislature,  1817. 


58  History  of  American  Prisons 

pardoned  from  our  penitentiaries,  while  the  young  and  inexperi- 
enced culprits,  for  committing  crimes  of  comparatively  petty  mag- 
nitude, are  kept  in  for  years. ' ' 

The  report  indicated  that  in  a  certain  five  years,  740  convicts 
were  pardoned,  and  only  77  through  expiration  of  sentence.  Of 
23  convicts  convicted  of  second  and  third  offenses  in  1815,  20  had 
been  previously  pardoned,  and  only  3  had  been  discharged  at  the 
expiration  of  sentence. 

Quoting  Sir  James  Mcintosh  in  the  British  House  of  Commons 
about  the  year  1819,  the  report  said: 

**One  pardon  contributes  more  to  excite  the  hope  of  escape  than  20 
executions  to  produce  the  fear  of  punishment." 

At  this  time,  the  additional  expense  of  a  military  guard  at  the 
prison  should  be  mentioned.  For  many  years,  to  keep  order  and  to 
prevent  riots  and  escapes,  in  a  region  considerably  outside  the  city, 
a  captain,  two  corporals,  a  drummer  and  a  fif er,  and  some  twenty 
privates  were  employed,  at  an  annual  expense  of  about  $8,500.'" 

By  1815,  the  garb  of  the  convicts  had  been  changed,  and  we  find 
the  first  mention  of  stripes.  In  winter  the  convict  costume  con- 
sisted of  a  jacket  and  trousers  of  striped  woolen,  and  in  summer 
of  striped  cotton  and  linen.  Second-termers  (those  who  had  already 
served  a  term  in  prison)  wore  a  garb  with  one  side  of  the  jacket 
and  trousers  brown;  third  termers  wore  a  tri-colored  cap  of  blue, 
red  and  white  with  the  numeral  *  *  3  "  in  front. 

To-day  the  ignominious  stripes  and  the  parti-colored  or  motley 
uniforms  have  been  in  general  abolished  throughout  this  country 
in  the  State  institutions  of  the  north.  The  additional  humiliation 
of  stripes  has  been  abandoned.  ''Stripes  burn  into  your  flesh 
through  the  cloth,"  said  a  prisoner  many  years  ago  to  the  writer. 
In  the  restoration  of  the  self-respect  and  self-confidence  of  the 
prisoner  stripes  and  humiliating  uniforms  can  play  no  part.  The 
''prison  gray"  has  become  a  customary  shade  for  the  prison  uni- 
form, and  the  writer,  sitting  some  years  ago  upon  a  bench  on  an 
inspection  of  Sing  Sing,  noted  that  the  garb  of  an  inmate  who  sat 
next  to  him  at  the  time,  in  conversation,  was  in  shade  and  in  general 
in  texture  little  different  from  the  suit  the  writer  was  wearing. 
Other  forces  than  the  conspicuous  and  deterrent  stripes  are  to-day 
employed  to  inhibit  men  from  escape  from  prisons. 

There  were,  by  1815,  three  visiting  physicians  and  one  surgeon, 
serving  without  compensation.  They  visited  in  turn  once  a  week 
or  oftener  if  necessary.  There  was  a  resident  physician,  who  had 
board  and  lodging. 

A  custom  that  later  provoked  public  criticism,  and  which  led 
undoubtedly  to  disorder  in  the  prison,  was  the  rewarding,  "to  a 
certain"  extent,  of  the  prisoners  by  giving  to  the  especially  indus- 
trious inmates  a  pint  of  ' '  wholesome  beer. ' '  The  inspectors  believed 
that  this  bonus  stimulated  to  diligence  and  exertion.** 

83  The  guards  performed  the  ordinary  duties  of  a  guard,  on  the  walls;  aud  in 
rounds. 

»*  View  of  New  York  State  Prison. 


History  of  American  Prisons  69 

There  was  a  chaplain,  the  Reverend  John  Stanford,  who  supplied 
the  desk  once  a  month.  On  other  Sundays  clergy  of  different  de- 
nominations preached.  There  was  always  good  deportment  in  the 
prison  at  the  services,  and  many  persons  in  the  vicinity  of  the 
prison  attended  worship  at  the  prison.  It  was  also  the  chaplain's 
duty  to  visit  the  sick  weekly. 

In  1815  the  warden  of  the  prison  proposed  a  noteworthy  im- 
provement in  the  methods  of  classification.  We  are  especially  con- 
cerned, in  this  study,  to  discover  the  origins  or  early  development 
of  theories  or  methods  that  later  proved  their  efficacy  in  American 
prisons.  And  we  find  here  the  first_§uggestion  of  grading  prisoners 
along  lines  that  later  in  the  century  became  epoch-making,  and 
that  led  directly  to  the  American  reformatory  system. 

The  warden  —  at  this  time  designated  as  '* Agent" — recom- 
mended that,  as  an  incentive  to  industry,  good  order,  and 
reformation,  a  classification  be  made  of  the  convicts,  forming  them 
into  three  or  four  classes,  selected  from  among  the  best  behaved 
prisoners,  having  reference  to  their  terms  of  service.  No  pardon, 
moreover,  should  be  granted  save  within  the  first  class  of  prisoners, 
except  in  special  instances. 

'*We  will  suppose",  said  the  Agent,  "that  there  are  seventy  in  the  first 
class,  whose  terms  of  sentence  are  from  three  to  five  years.  These  men  shall 
be  informed  that  on  a  continuance  of  good  behaviour,  one  half  of  their 
sentence  will  be  remitted,  and  they  will  be  entitled  to  their  pardon  accord- 
ingly; assuring  them  that  particularly  favorable  circumstances  may  obtain 
it  sooner,  subject,  however,  to  degradation  by  the  board  of  inspectors." 

Furthermore,  the  agent  recommended  that  there  should  be  given 
a  certificate  of  ** liberation  by  merit"  to  those  convicts  who  had 
during  their  confinement  met  the  approbation  of  the  board  of 
managers.  In  the  agent's  opinion,  the  grading  method  would  be 
an  inducement  to  reformation  and  industry,  and  would  obviate  the 
wholesale  discharge  of  convicts  twice  a  year.^ 

It  is  recognized,  to-day,  that  the  proper  classification  of  prisoners 
is  a  sine  qua  non  of  reasonable  and  constructive  treatment  of 
inmates.  We  spoke,  in  the  opening  paragraphs  of  this  study,  of  the 
new  receiving  and  classification  prison  shortly  to  be  opened  in 
place  of  the  old  Sing  Sing  Prison.  To-day  the  prison  physician, 
the  psychologist  and  the  psychiatrist  are  integral  parts  of  the  staff  of 
the  *' progressive "  prison  and  reformatory.  Individual  treatment 
of  the  inmate  is  regarded  as  practically  as  important  in  prison  as 
in  a  hospital.  To  deal  with  prisoners  in  the  mass  is  the  sign  of 
unenlightened  administration.  It  is  well  established  that  in  every 
prison  are  found  a  number  of  groups  of  inmates,  some  insane 
some  feebleminded,  some  psychopathic,  some  suffering  from  disease, 
and  some  relatively  normal.  The  prison  of  to-day  is  becoming  a 
sifter  of  these  groups,  classifying  them  as  to  conditions  and  as  to 
treatment. 

Yet  this  recognition  of  the  widely  varying  individualities  in 
the  prison  population  is  of  comparatively  recent  occurrence.  The 
psychologist  and  the  psychiatrist  are  still  rather  novel  members  of 

^  View  of  New  York  State  Prison,  p.  71. 


60  History  of  American  Prisons 

the  staff  of  many  a  prison.  The  physician,  only  a  few  years  ago, 
was  still  the  general  authority  on  all  the  physical  and  mental  states 
of  the  prison  population.  ''Horse  sense, '^  an  attribute  confidently 
announced  by  many  a  prison  warden  as  present  in  abundance  in 
his  own  make-up,  wa^  the  main  basis  of  administrative  judgment. 
Returning  now  to  our  discussion  of  the  Newgate  Prison  of  New 
York,  we  find  that  the  prison  inspectors'  report  for  1815  carried 
some  enlightened  prerequisites  for  any  recommendation  on  their 
part  for  a  prisoner 's  pardon.  A  majority  of  the  inspectors  should 
join  in  every  recommendation  for  pardon,  and  they  should 
previously  inquire : 

Whether  the  prisoner  was  convicted  by  clear  and  undoubted  testimony. 

Whether  the  circumstances  attending  the  commission  of  the  crime  denoted 
a  greater  or  less  degree  of  depravity. 

Whether  the  prisoner  had  already  suffered  a  punishment  sufficient  to 
satisfy  society,  and  to  afford  a  reasonable  ground  to  believe  that  his  release 
would  not  diminish  the  dread  of  future  punishment  in  him,  or  inspire  the 
hope  of  impunity  in  others. 

Whether  in  prison  he  had  conducted  himself  with  uniform;  decency, 
industry,  and  sobriety,  and  had  never  attempted  to  violate  any  of  the 
regulations. 

Whether,  from  what  was  known  of  his  temper,  character  and  deportment, 
it  was  probable  that,  if  restored  to  society,  he  would  become  a  peaceable, 
honest  and  industrious  citizen.  '* 

The  above-cited  recommendations  of  the  agent  and  the  practical 
prerequisites  for  pardon  laid  down  by  the  board  of  managers  were 
in  some  respects  a  remarkable  foreshadowing  of  the  indeterminate 
sentence  and  of  the  later  grading  of  prisoners  by  classes,  with 
eligibility  for  parole  only  after  the  attainment  of  a  certain  standing 
within  the  institution.  Indeed,  even  the  theory  of  the  ''ticket  of 
leave,"  employed  in  England  in  connection  with  transported  con- 
victs, and  which  gave  the  chief  suggestion  for  our  American  system 
of  parole,  is  foreshadowed  in  the  above  ' '  liberation  by  merit. ' ' 

Meanwhile  the  pardon  evil  was  becoming  intolerable.  Of  all 
convicts  committed  between  1811  and  1816,  for  a  second  or  third 
time,  two-thirds  had  been  discharged  from  their  former  sentence 
by  pardon.^  In  1816  and  1817,  a  total  of  573  convicts  were  par- 
doned.^^  It  was  no  longer  the  case  of  an  occasional  release  by 
grace.  It  was  a  constant  procession  of  outgoing  convicts  as  the 
newcomers  arrived.  Clearly,  the  prison  system,  from  any  deterrent 
standpoint,  had  wholly  broken  down.  Such  a  situation  could  not 
long  continue.  The  whole  administration  of  prisons  was  rapidly 
becoming  a  civic  disgrace. 

^  To  add  to  the  problem,  between  1815  and  1822,  the  failure  of  the 
prison  to  succeed  as  a  financial  undertaking  was  still  more  marked. 
A  very  intelligent  inmate,  writing  in  1823  under  the  title  "Inside 
Out "  ^   of   his  several  years '   imprisonment   in   this   New   York 

«»  Roscoe.     Observations,  p.  108. 

^  Report  of  Massachusetts  Commissioners  on  State  Prison,  1817. 

8«  Report  of  Agent  of  the  Mount  Pleasant  State  Prison,  No.  92,  In  Senate.  New 
York,  1834. 

«» "  Inside  Out,  or  an  Interior  View  of  the  New  York  State  Prison."  By  One 
Who  Knows.    New  York.    James  Costigan,  1823. 


History  of  American  Prisons  61 

Newgate,  drew  a  graphic  picture  of  the  brutality  and  misery  of  the 
place.    Among  the  punishments  prevalent  were : 

The  chaining  of  inmates  to  the  floor,  on  their  backs,  for  several  consecutive 
days,  with  diet  of  bread  and  water,  in  solitary  confinement; 

The  "Sunday  Cell",  about  5  feet  in  height,  and  3%  feet  square,  in  which 
a  man  of  ordinary  stature  could  neither  stand  erect  nor  lie  downj 

Blocks  and  chains; 

Flogging. 

Solitary  confinement  for  slight  offenses. 

The  inmate  writer  of  ''Inside  Out"  inveighed  especially  against 
the  brutal  callousness  and  coarse  ignorance  of  the  keepers  and 
guards. 

We  meet  in  the  above  list  of  so-called  punishments  our  first 
example  of  the  inevitable  development  within  the  prison  of  methods 
of  physical  discipline,  amounting  often  to  torture.  We  shall  meet 
constantly  the  narratives  of  such  infliction  of  pain,  for  the  main- 
tenance of  discipline  and  for  the  punishment  of  those  who  have 
disobeyed  the  prison  rules.  The  prison  offered  an  exceptional 
chance  for  the  infliction  of  grave  corporal  punishments  and  even 
torture.  The  place  was  behind  great  walls,  ever  concealing  what 
was  going  on;  the  public  had  little  interest  in  the  prison;  there 
was  always  the  easy  excuse  that  the  one  punished  was  unruly,  or 
gravely  disobedient,  or  dangerous,  or  obstinate.  The  prison  authori- 
ties were  in  the  earlier  years  not  supervised  by  any  State  authority, 
and  had  practically  free  rein  to  do  their  will.  The  warden  and  the 
officers  could  during  most  of  the  twenty-four  hours  do  their  own 
will  with  the  prisoners,  unbeknown  to  the  board  of  managers.  The 
prisoner 's  word  was  of  little  or  no  weight ;  the  word  and  assevera- 
tion of  the  warden  or  other  officers  was  far  more  potent.  The 
prisoner  often  realized  that  to  complain  to  a  member  of  the  board 
of  managers  of  treatment  received  at  the  hands  of  the  officers  was 
tantamount  to  additional  and  far  graver  punishment  later  on  by 
the  officers  complained  against.  The  prisoners  were  regarded  as 
most  dangerous  men ;  they  had  forfeited  by  their  crimes  the  same 
consideration  that  men  *'on  the  outside"  might  expect. 

Moreover,  we  are  in  our  study  in  the  period  when  bodily  punish 
ments  had  taken  the  place  of  capital  punishment  for  many  offenses. 
Imprisonment  alone  seemed  no  adequate  punishment  to  many  an 
officer  and  guard.  When  the  prisoner  was  unruly,  or  participated 
in  some  outbreak,  there  was  little  ground  for  leniency,  and  much 
ground  for  drastic,  prompt  and  persistent  punishment.  Thus  did 
the  prison  become  a  place  of  dread  doings,  removed  from  public 
gaze  and  public  knowledge,  a  place  of  oblivion,  where  all  the 
power  rested  in  a  few  hands,  and  where  the  mind  of  the  prisoner 
was  ever  on  escape  from  the  wretched,  and  often  horrible, 
surroundings. 

This  degeneration  of  the  prison  from  the  high  ideals  of  Caleb 
Lownes  and  Thomas  Eddy  was  so  far  advanced  that  about  1820 
private  indignation  meetings  of  influential  citizens  began  to  be  held 
in  New  York  City. 


62  History  of  American  Prisons 

*' These  meetings  were  private,  because  a  knowledge  of  the  acts  of 
mischief,  as  taught  in  these  places  (the  prisons),  could  not  be  communicated 
to  any  but  good  citizens." 

In  1822  the  State  government  stepped  in  with  an  investigation 
of  Newgate  and  other  prisons.  Regarding  the  New  York  institu- 
tion, the  report  of  the  State  committee  stated  that  it  was  operating 
''with  alarming  frequency  to  increase,  diffuse  and  extend  the  arts 
of  vice,  and  a  knowledge  of  the  arts  and  practices  of  criminal- 
ity."^ The  causes  of  the  failure  of  Newgate  prison  were  sum- 
marized as  follows : 

The  overwhelming  number  of  convicts. 

Their  profligate  and  abandoned  character. 

The  impossibility  of  making  their  labor  successful. 

Pecuniary  embarrassment  in  the  affairs  of  the  prison. 

Enormous  demands  on  the  public  treasury,  without  the  intermission  of  a 

year. 
New  and  fruitless  endeavors  to  make  labor  productive. 
The  fearful  progress  of  the  prisoners  in  corrupting  each  other.  *^ 

It  will  be  noted  that  while  the  writer,  himself  a  convict,  of 
''Inside  Out"  lays  some  of  the  blame  for  the  situation  upon  the 
callousness  and  cruelty  of  the  officers  of  the  prison,  the  State 
committee's  report  recognizes  no  such  factor  in  the  disintegration 
of  the  prison.  To  them,  congestion,  idleness,  recidivism  and 
debauchery  were  spelling  the  breakdown  of  the  first  State  prison  of 
New  York. 

Recidivism  —  that  is,  the  return  of  a  prisoner  for  a  new  crime  — 
has  always  been  one  of  the  most  frequent  phenomena  of  all  prisons. 
Convicts  committing  a  second  crime  within  the  State  in  which  they 
have  committed  their  first,  are  naturally  sent  again  to  State  prison. 
They  become  the  "second-termers,"  the  "third-termers,"  the  "re- 
peaters," the  "habituals"  of  the  prison  statistics.  The  annual 
reports  of  the  prison  inspectors  of  Newgate  cited  as  early  as  1815, 
many  illustrations,  of  which  the  following  is  typical.^  It  happens 
to  be  the  record  of  a  woman  ' '  repeater, ' '  but  many  examples  might 
be  culled  similarly  of  men  ' '  repeaters ' ' : 

Charlotte  Thomas,  alias  Margaret  Devibe. 

Admitted,  January  28,  1797,  for  grand  larceny.  Sentence,  4  years. 
Pardoned  in  3  years,  6  months. 

Keadmitted,  April  14,  1801,  for  petty  larceny.     Sentence,  2  years. 

Eeadmitted,  June,  1803,  for  petty  larceny.     Sentence,  3  years. 

Eeadmitted,  August  12,  1806.  Two  indictments  for  petty  larceny. 
Sentence,  4  years. 

Keadmitted,  June  19,  1813,  for  grand  larceny.     Sentence,  3  years,  1  day. 

"Such  a  prison,"  wrote  William  Roscoe  in  1819,^  "is  no  longer 
a  school  for  reform,  but  a  receptacle  and  shelter  for  acknowledged 
guilt. ' '  Roscoe  held  the  remedy  to  be  in  an  adequate  classification 
and  consequent  separation  of  groups  of  prisoners  from  each  other. 
"No  delinquent,"  said  Roscoe,  "should  twice  be  sent  to  the  same 
penitentiary,  but  other  measures,  perhaps  transportation  for  life, 
should  be  adopted." 

*o  Hopkins,  p.  96. 

*i  Same,  p.  93. 

*2  Annual  Report  for  1815. 

*3  Observations,  p.  99. 


History  of  American  Prisons  63 

*' Liberated  felons  jeered  at  the  State  Prison,  and  denominated  it  their 
'college'.  Many  committed  crimes  for  the  express  purpose  of  getting  back 
to  prison  again. ' '  ** 

We  find  the  Senate  committee  in  New  York,  four  years  after 
similar  action  in  Pennsylvania,  making  in  New  York  the  same 
radical  and  fundamental  proposal  for  a  prison  administered  on  the 
basis  of  solitary  confinement,  without  any  employment  of  prisoners. 
There  should  be  a  renovation  of  Newgate  prison  to  this  end,  and  a 
gradation  of  punishments.  Because  of  the  greater  consequent 
severity  of  the  punishments,  in  solitary  confinement  and  in  enforced 
idleness,  it  was  maintained  that  the  period  of  imprisonment  could 
be  shortened  at  the  time  of  sentence.  Solitude,  silence  and  dark- 
ness, with  stinted  food,  should  in  the  opinion  of  the  Senate 
committee  effect  the  purpose  sought. 

A  further  radical  recommendation  was  that  all  industries  be 
abandoned.  The  committee  maintained  that  this  would  actually 
reduce  the  expense  of  the  operation  of  the  prison.  With  the  use 
of  the  solitary  cells,  there  would  be  reduced  rations,  and  so  the 
prisoners  would  need  less,  because  less  active. 

To  such  extremes  were  the  intelligent  citizens  of  New  York 
and  Philadelphia  driven  in  their  penal  theories !  Both  cities  came 
thus  to  advocate  a  system  of  imprisonment  that  to  us  of  to-day 
seems  little  short  of  deliberate  torture.  Yet  with  both  groups  of 
reformers,  there  was  unquestioned  sincerity,  and  a  belief  that 
even  if  an  evil,  it  was  the  least  evil  that  could  be  devised,  and 
still  insure  the  maintenance  of  a  prison  discipline  that  would  both 
punish  and  amend. 

The  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Pauperism  had,  in  1822, 
indicted  the  then  existing  system,  or  lack  of  system,  in  a  graphic 
description,  suitable  to  close  this  chapter  upon  New  York's  first 
effort  to  solve  the  State  prison  problem: 

"Our  prisons  (referring  to  penitentiaries  in  the  several  States)  are  com- 
munities by  themselves.  All  the  characteristics  of  social  intercourse  are 
presented.  The  members  of  these  little  communities  are  comfortably  clothed, 
comfortably  fed,  condemned  to  moderate  labor,  and  easy  tasks,  permitted  to 
have  their  hours  of  ease  and  recreation,  indulged  in  talking  over  their 
exploits  in  the  paths  of  guilt,  suffered  to  form  new  schemes  for  future 
execution,  and  to  wear  away  their  term  of  service,  under  circumstances 
calculated  to  deprive  it  of  every  salutary  effect". 

**  Senate  Document  92,  1834,  p.  5. 


CHAPTER  VII 


^       NEWGATE  OF  CONNECTICUT 

On  the  seventh  of  December,  1775,  George  Washington,  com- 
manding the  American  forces,  addressed  a  letter  to  the  ' '  Committee 
of  Safety ' '  at  Simsbury,  Connecticut,  as  follows : 

"Cambridge,  Bec.jf,  1775. 

Gentlemen. —  The  prisoners  which  will  be  delivered  you  with  this,  having 
been  tried  by  a  court  martial  and  deemed  to  be  such  flagrant  and  atrocious 
villians  that  they  cannot  by  any  means  be  set  at  large  or  confined  in  any 
place  near  this  camp,  were  sentenced  to  Simsbury,  in  Connecticut.  You  will, 
therefore,  be  pleased  to  have  them  secured  in  your  jail,  or  in  such  other 
manner  as  to  you  shall  seem  necessary,  so  that  they  cannot  possibly  make  their 
escape.  The  charges  of  their  imprisonment  will  be  at  the  Continental 
expense. 

I  am,  etc., 

George  Washington." 

This  letter  sent  certain  prisoners  of  war  to  one  of  the  most 
terrible  and  at  the  same  time  one  of  the  most  picturesque  prisons 
that  we  meet  in  our  study  of  early  American  prisons.  In  1707,  a 
company  had  been  formed  in  the  little  hill  village  of  Simsbury, 
Connecticut,  about  fifty  miles  north  of  New  Haven,  and  some  miles 
west  of  Hartford,  to  operate  a  copper  mine.  In  1705,  a  vein  of  ore 
had  been  discovered  there.  As  gold  was  believed  to  be  not  far 
distant,  a  company  to  work  it  had  been  quickly  formed.  The 
company's  vicissitudes  do  not  concern  us,  but  after  several  com- 
panies in  turn  had  sought  to  make  money  out  of  Connecticut  copper, 
the  mine  was  abandoned  until  1773,  when  the  Colony  of  Connecticut 
made  of  this  strange  cavernous  property,  with  its  several  levels  of 
underground  galleries,  an  underground  prison.  It  was  dubbed 
Newgate,  perhaps  with  the  hope  that  the  name  would  be  as  terrify- 
ing as  the  prototype  in  London. 

From  1775  to  1783,  this  Newgate  was  the  national  prison  of  the 
Continental  Government,  and  from  1790  to  1827  the  State  prison 
of  Connecticut.  During  the  Revolution  it  was  used  in  part  as  a 
prison  for  Tories.  From  the  first  the  prison  was  a  scene  of  violence, 
stupid  management,  escapes,  assaults,  orgies  and  demoralization. 
It  was  the  first  State  prison  we  have  record  of  in  our  study  in  length 
of  use  in  this  period.  It  was  bought  in  the  beginning  and  ''for- 
tified as  a  prison"  for  the  sum  of  $375.  In  1827,  the  newly  erected 
State  Prison  at  Wether sfield  superseded  this  notorious  underground 
institution. 

Newgate  of  Connecticut  has  no  comparative  value  in  our  study. 
It  seems  to  have  been  little,  if  at  all,  affected  by  the  new  movement 
in  prison  administration  in  Philadelphia  or  New  York.  No  reform- 
ative  influences   are   narrated   by   its   chief    chronicler,    Richard 

164] 


History  of  American  Prisons  65 

Phelps.  Taking  Phelps'  record  at  its  face  value,  it  would  be  hard 
to  find  adjectives  sufficiently  graphic  to  describe  conditions  in  this 
prison.    The  old  mine  was  forever  a  makeshift  prison. 

The  entrance  to  these  dungeons,  as  described  by  Charles  Burr 
Todd  in  1881,  is  by  a  perpendicular  shaft  fifty  feet  deep,  ''whose 
yawning  mouth  is  still  covered  by  the  guardhouse  standing  in  the 
center  of  the  prison  yard.  To  one  of  its  sides  is  affixed  a  wooden 
ladder,  down  which  the  visitor  must  climb  to  reach  the  dungeons 
below." 

"At  the  bottom  of  the  shaft,  a  flight  of  stone  steps  leads  down  thirty  or 
forty  feet  farther  to  a  central  chamber,  which  contained  the  sleeping 
apartments  of  the  convicts.  On  one  side  a  narrow  passage  leads  down  to  a 
well  of  pure  water,  above  which  an  air  shaft  pierces  the  sandstone  for  seventy 
feet  until  it  reaches  the  surface  and  admits  a  few  cheering  rays  of  light  into 
the  dungeon.     Everywhere  else  a  Cimmerian  darkness  prevails. 

These  caverns  may  be  briefly  described  as  comprising  three  parallel  gal- 
leries in  the  heart  of  the  mountain,  extending  800  feet  north  and  south,  and 
connected  by  numerous  cross  passages  cut  to  facilitate  communication,  while 
lateral  galleries  honeycomb  the  mountain  on  either  side.  The  lowest  depth 
reached  is  three  hundred  feet.  The  galleries  are  cut  through  the  solid  rock, 
and  are  low  and  narrow,  except  in  the  case  of  the  chamber  above  mentioned. 
Their  floors  are  covered  with  a  soft  adhesive  slime,  and  in  some  places  with 
water,  which  drips  unceasingly  from  the  roof,  and  the  intense  darkness  and 
noxious  gases  which  prevail  make  their  passage  difficult,  though  not  impos- 
sible. Besides  the  main  shaft  there  are  other  means  of  exit  from  the  dun- 
geons —  two  air  shafts,  both  of  which  open  in  the  prison  yard,  and  a  level 
or  drain  leading  from  the  northeast  gallery,  and  having  its  outlet  without  the 
prison  wall." 

In  1773,  Connecticut  passed  an  act  directing  that  male  prisoners 
not  under  sentence  for  capital  crimes  should  be  imprisoned  in  the 
mines.  A  keeper.  Captain  John  Viets,  was  appointed.  Burglary, 
robbery  and  counterfeiting  were  punished,  the  first  offense  by 
imprisonment  not  exceeding  ten  years,  the  second  offense  by  im- 
prisonment for  life.  Punishment  which  might  be  inflicted  upon  the 
convicts  was  moderate  whipping,  not  exceeding  ten  stripes,  and 
putting  shackles  and  fetters  upon  them;  the  keeper  was  also 
instructed  to  employ  them  at  labor  in  the  mines. 

Wooden  buildings  were  more  than  once  constructed  at  the  mouths 
of  the  shafts,  only  to  be  burned  by  the  prisoners.  When  the 
convict  band  emerged  from  their  caverns  and  into  daylight  in  the 
mornings,  their  appearance  seemed  like  the  ''belching  from  the 
bottomless  pit." 

The  prison  was  thus  described  by  Phelps,  who  saw  it  in  its  later 
days : 

**The  horrfd  gloom  of  this  dungeon  can  be  realized  only  by  those  who 
pass  along  its  solitary  windings.  The  impenetrable  vastness  supporting  the 
awful  mass  above,  impending  as  if  ready  to  crush  one  to  atoms;  the  dripping 
water  trickling  like  tears  from  its  sides;  the  unearthly  echoes  responding 
to  the  voice,  all  conspire  to  strike  the  beholder  with  amazement  and  horror." 

John  Hinson  was  the  first  prisoner  formally  committed  to  New- 
gate on  December  2,  1773.  On  the  eighteenth  night  of  his 
confinement,  being  the  only  prisoner,  he  was  drawn  up  through 
one  of  the  shafts  in  a  bucket  that  had  been  used  for  hoisting  ore, 
the  rescuer  of  Hinson  being  one  strong-handed  Phyllis,  serving 
on  one  of  the  neighboring  farms.    Escapes  in  similar  ways  were  not 

3 


66  History  of  American  Prisons 

infrequent  in  the  earlier  years.  The  prisoners  were  lodged  in  huts 
and  cabins,  made  in  the  caverns.  The  most  atrocious  congestion  and 
commingling  of  prisoners  came  to  be  practiced  in  time.  In  a  room 
21  feet  long,  10  feet  wide,  and  less  than  7  feet  high,  32  m?en  were 
crowded  at  night.  The  prisoners  were  secured  with  iron  fetters 
around  the  ankles.  While  at  work,  a  chain  fastened  to  a  block 
was  locked  into  these  fetters,  or  around  the  ankle.  No  female 
prisoners  were  at  first  sent  here,  but  served  their  terms  in  country 
jails.    Later,  an  act  of  the  Legislature  admitted  them  to  Newgate. 

During  the  eight  years  of  the  war  of  the  Revolution,  Newgate 
became  widely  celebrated,  because  of  the  housing  of  prisoners  of 
war. 

We  read  frequently,  in  this  early  period,  of  the  dense  ignorance 
and  inefficiency  of  the  guards  and  keepers,  not  only  at  the  Con- 
necticut Newgate,  but  at  other  prisons.  Here  is  a  letter  from  a 
guard  discharged  from  Newgate  in  Connecticut: 

To  the  Hon.  General  Assembly,  The  humble  petishen  of  Able  Davis; 
whare  as  at  the  honorable  supene  court  holden  in  Hartford  in  December  last 
I  was  conficted  of  mis  Deminer  on  the  count  of  newgate  being  burnt  as  I 
had  comand  of  said  gard  and  was  order  to  bee  contind  3  month  and  pay 
fourteen  pounds  for  disabaing  orders,  I  cant  read  riten,  but  I  did  all  in 
my  power  to  distingus  the  flame,  but  being  very  much  frited  and  not  the 
faculty  to  doe  as  much  indistress  as  I  could  another  time  and  that  is  very 
smaul,  what  to  do  I  thot  it  best  to  let  out  the  prisners  that  war  in  the 
botams  as  I  had  just  time  to  get  the  gates  lifted  before  the  hous  was  in 
flames,  and  the  gard  being  frited  it  twant  in  my  power  to  scape  them.  I 
now  pray  to  the  Deflahaned  from  further  in  prisment,  and  the  const  of  said 
sute  as  I  hante  abel  to  pay  the  const,  or  give  me  the  liberty  of  the  yard 
as  I  am  very  unwell  as  your  petishner  in  duty  bound  will  for  ever  pay. 

Hartford  Gaol,  January  l^th,  1783. 

Abel  Daveis.'' 

Dodd  tells  of  a  desperate  outbreak  that  occurred  during  the  time 
of  the  imprisonment  of  prisoners  of  war  on  May  17th,  1781. 

"At  that  time  there  were  thirty  desperate  men  confined  in  the  vaults. 
The  guard  in  charge  of  them  consisted  of  a  lieutenant,  sergeant,  corporal 
and  twenty-four  privates,  several  of  the  latter  mere  boys,  and  all  lax  in  their 
ideas  of  discipline.  The  officers  were  armed  with  swords  and  pistols,  the 
privates  with  muskets  and  fixed  bayonets. 

"On  the  night  of  the  day  in  question,  after  the  prisoners  had  been 
fastened  in  the  dungeons,  the  wife  of  a  convict  named  Young  appeared  and 
desired  to  see  him,  and,  as  there  was  nothing  suspicious  in  this,  the  request 
was  readily  granted.  Two  oflBicers  lifted  the  trap,  the  rest  of  the  guard 
being  asleep,  but  no  sooner  was  the  heavy  door  unfastened  than  it  was  thrust 
violently  up  from  beneath,  and  the  whole  body  of  prisoners  rushed  into  th*^ 
room. 

"The  two  officers  were  at  once  struck  down,  the  arms  of  the  privates 
seized,  and,  after  a  sharp  tussle,  the  insurgents  became  masters  of  the  prison. 
In  the  melee,  six  of  the  guard  were  wounded  —  one  mortally  —  and  a  like 
number  of  assailants.  After  this  exploit,  the  victors  proceeded  to  close  the 
hatches  on  their  former  guards  and  fled  to  the  forests,  and,  with  one  or  two 
exceptions,  succeeded  in  escaping. 

"This  wholesale  delivery  produced  the  wildest  excitement,  and  expressions 
not  very  complimentary  to  the  management  of  the  prison  or  to  the  honesty 
of  the  guards  were  freely  bandied  about." 

It  was  a  motley  company,  this  Newgate  crew  of  convicts.  They 
were  allowed  to  gamble  away  their  daily  rations  of  a  pound  of 
meat,  a  pound  of  bread,  a  pint  of  cider,  and  potatoes.    A  near-by 


History  of  American  Prisons  67 

tavern  offered  its  commodities  to  those  convicts  who  possessed 
money  earned  through  working  for  themselves  or  others,  after  the 
daily  prison  stint  was  done.  Flogging,  the  stocks,  heavy  irons, 
hanging  by  the  heels,  and  other  stern  survivals  of  the  Colonial 
period  were  customary  punishments.  The  compulsory  daily  work 
consisted  of  making  nails,  barrels,  shoes,  wagons,  and  of  doing 
farm  and  job  work,  and  operating  the  tread  mill,  which  was  a  form 
of  punishment  quite  unusual  in  America. 

Dodd  has  this  of  interest  to  say,  regarding  the  sanitary 
<5onditions  : 

"Other  observers  have  noted  the  fact,  recorded  by  them,  that  the  confine- 
ment was  not  detrimental  to  health;  indeed,  some  of  the  prisoners  reached 
extreme  old  age  while  incarcerated  there.  The  circumstance  was  attributed 
by  some  to  a  medicinal  quality  of  the  mineral  rock  which  forms  the  wall  of 
the  cavern;  others  supposed  it  to  be  due  to  the  equable  temperature.  In 
1811,  experiments  were  made  to  ascertain  the  mean  temperature  of  the 
mines,  when  it  was  discovered  that  the  mercury  ranged  eight  degrees  lower 
there  in  the  hottest  days  of  summer  than  in  the  coldest  days  of  winter,  and 
-that  the  mean  temperature  was  forty-eight  degrees." 

Edward  Augustus  Kendall  traveled  through  the  northern  parts 
of  the  United  States  in  1807  and  1808,  and  visited  the  Newgate 
Prison,  of  which  he  wrote : 

**When  the  bell  summoned  the  prisoners  to  work,  they  came  in  irregular 
numbers,  sometimes  2  or  3  together,  and  sometimes  a  single  one  alone;  but 
whenever  one  or  more  were  about  to  cross  the  yard  to  the  smithy,  the 
•soldiers  were  ordered  to  present,  in  readiness  to  fire.  The  prisoners  were 
heavily  ironed,  and  secured  both  by  handcuffs  and  fetters ;  and  being  therefore 
unable  to  walk,  could  only  make  their  way  by  a  sort  of  jump  or  hop.  On 
-entering  the  smithy,  some  went  to  the  sides  of  the  forges,  where  collars, 
dependent  by  iron  chains  from  the  roof,  were  fastened  round  their  necks, 
And  others  were  chained  in  pairs  to  wheelbarrows.  .  .  .  Prisoners  in 
the  yard  are  treated  precisely  as  tigers  are  treated  in  a  menagerie;  and  if 
the  minds  of  men  are  influenced  by  education,  then  the  education  of  a  tiger 
may  be  expected  to  make  a  tiger  of  the  man. ' '  ^ 

This  miserable  makeshift  of  a  prison  was  abandoned  in  1827, 
when  the  convicts  were  removed  to  the  new  State  prison  at  Wethers- 
field.  A  history  of  cruelty,  riots,  insurrections,  vice  and  crime  — 
such  is  the  sum  total  of  Newgate's  contribution  to  early  American 
prison  history.  Receiving  those  steeped  in  crime,  it  degraded  them 
still  more.  It  forced  the  debauched  and  the  decent,  the  young 
and  the  old,  into  intimate  physical  association.  It  was  a  plague 
spot  on  American  prison  history,  quite  comparable  with  the  convict 
ships  of  the  transportation  period  of  England.  As  one  chronicler 
well  says  of  it,  ' '  the  system  was  well  suited  to  turn  men  into  devils, 
but  it  never  could  have  transformed  devils  into  men."  It  seems 
not  to  have  been  susceptible  to  the  reform  wave  that  affected  Phila- 
delphia, New  York,  and  Massachusetts,  to  which  we  shall  shortly 
give  our  attention. 

Yet,  in  Connecticut  for  twenty  years,  prior  to  1827,  it  was  held,  ' 
in  public  opinion,  that  Newgate  was  the  best  prison  in  the  country. 
"The  Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society's  annual  report  for  1827 
remarks,  however,  that  ''there  has  been  a  great  change  in  public  » 
opinion  in  the  last  two  years." 

^  E.   A.   Kendall.    "  Travels   Through    the    Northern   Parts   of   the   United    States 
In  the  Years  1807  and  1808.     Vol.  I,  pp.  206-218. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


THE  MASSACHUSETTS  STATE  PRISON 

It  was  more  than  ten  years  after  the  introduction  of  the  new 
system  at  Philadelphia  in  1790  before  Massachusetts  set  to  work 
to  build  a  prison,  and  to  adopt  in  general  the  new  methods  tested 
out  in  Pennsylvania  and  New  York.  The  history  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts State  Prison,  in  the  period  that  ended  approximately  with 
1829,  when  another  prison  building  was  erected  with  separate  cells 
for  individual  prisoners,  and  when  the  so-called  ''Auburn  system'* 
of  silence,  separate  cells  and  associated  labor  was  introduced,  is 
given  to  us  in  a  number  of  annual  reports  of  boards  of  inspectors, 
descriptions  of  the  prison  administration,  and  in  a  popular  descrip- 
tion, compiled  from  old  records  by  Gideon  Haynes.^  Haynes  laid 
much  stress  upon  the  severe  disciplinary  features  of  the  early  years 
of  the  prison.  The  inpsectors '  reports  stress  especially  the  fiiaancial 
difficulties  of  the  institution.  The  student  gains  a  very  positive 
impression  of  stern  treatment  and  of  the  subordination  on  the  part 
of  the  administration  of  any  reformatory  influences  to  the  demands 
that  the  prison  be  run  economically  and  even  stingily. 
VPrior  to  1785,  Massachusetts  h^  no  places  save  county  jails 
for  the  imprisonment  of  convictsd-^n  1785,  a  prison  was  built  on 
Castle  Island,  in  Boston  Harbor,  but  because  of  the  insecurity  of 
the  prison  it  was  abandoned  in  less  than  twenty  years.  Inmates 
could  escape  across  the  ice  to  the  mainland  in  the  winter,  and  if 
good  swimmers,  could  not  be  deterred  from  escape  in  the  summer. 
Charles  Bulfinch,  in  his  report  to  Congress  in  1827  on  the  subject 
of  penitentiaries,  stated  that  on  the  occasion  of  Castle  Island 
being  ceded  to  the  United  States  in  1804  by  Massachusetts,  the 
Legislature  of  that  State  directed  that  a  State  prison  be  built  in 
Charlestown.  And  so  Massachusetts  began  to  build  a  prison  on 
four  acres  at  Lynde's  Point,  just  across  the  Charles  River  from 
Boston,  in  Charlestown.  The  prison  was  to  be  ''for  the  reforma- 
tion as  well  as  the  punishment  of  convicts."  It  was  opened  on 
December  12th,  1805. 

The  original  intention  was  that  the  plan  of  the  prison  should 
embrace  only  solitary  cells,  7  by  9  feet.  But  when  built,  the  prison 
resembled  in  general  plan  and  structure  Newgate  of  New  York. 

1  Pictures  from  Prison  Life.     An  Historical   Sketch   of   the   Massachusetts   State 

Prison.     Gideon  Haynes.     Boston,  Lee  &  Shephard,  1869. 

Account  of  the  Massachusetts  State  PHson.  By  the  Board  of  Visitors.  Charles- 
town, 1806. 

Report  on  the  Penitentiary  System  of  the  United  States.     New  York,  1822. 

Rules  and  Regulations  of  the  Massachusetts  State  Prison,  1811.  (In  Appendix 
to  Account  of  Massachusetts  State  Prison.) 

Description  and  Historical  Sketch  of  Massachusetts  State  Prison.     1816  or  1817. 

Report  of  Committee  appointed  in  1816  to  consider  subject  of  the  State  Prison 
of  Massachusetts  and  to  inquire  into  the  mode  of  governing  the  Penitentiary 
of  Pennsylvania,  1817. 

Report  of  Board  of  Visitors,  1823. 

2  Pictures,  etc.,  p.  13. 

[68] 


History  of  American  Prisons  69 

It  was  200  feet  long.  The  central  section,  66  feet  long  and  28  feet 
wide,  contained  rooms  for  the  keeper  and  other  officers,  as  well  as 
a  kitchen  in  the  basement,  and  a  chapel  and  hospital  in  the  upper 
story.  On  each  end  of  the  main  building  was  a  wing,  67  feet  long 
and  44  feet  wide,  four  stories  high,  containing  in  the  first  story 
28  cells,  8  feet  by  11  feet ;  the  second  story,  30  cells  of  similar  size, 
and  in  the  third  and  fourth  stories  a  total  of  32  rooms,  17  feet  by 
11  feet.« 

Like  a  massive  fortress  this  prison  was  built,  conditioning  per- 
haps in  part  the  growing  idea  that  the  prison  house  should  be  of 
monumental  proportions.  Safety,  of  course,  was  constantly  sug- 
gesting the  necessary  use  of  stone  and  iron.  This  Massachusetts 
prison  was  supposedly  fireproof,  and  it  was  held  to  be  impossible  to 
undermine  it.  The  outer  walls  of  the  prison  were  four  feet  thick; 
the  doors  of  the  basement  story  were  of  solid  wrought  iron,  weigh- 
ing from  500  to  600  pounds  each.  The  prison  yard,  375  by  260 
feet,  was  surrounded  by  a  stone  wall  actually  five  feet  thick  at  the 
bottom,  three  feet  thick  at  the  top,  and  fifteen  feet  high.  Truly 
a  bastile ! 

Naturally,  prison  buildings,  because  built  for  security,  are  of  an 
enduring  construction  when  once  completed  and  in  operation. 
Therefore,  when  once  a  great  prison  structure  has  been  built,  it 
has  lasted  long,  and  often  has  continued  to  condition  a  form  of 
treatment  long  after  a  less  enduring  structure  might  have  been 
scrapped  to  gi\e  place  to  new  methods.  A  striking  example  of 
this  is  manifest  to-day  in  the  State  of  New  York.  The  reformatory 
treatment  of  the  so-called  young  offender,  now  committed  to  Elmira 
Reformatory,  is  far  different  in  theory  and  practice  from  what  it 
was  fifty  years  ago,  when  the  Reformatory  was  first  designed.  The 
prison-type  of  cell,  the  great  congregate  structures,  the  relatively 
restricted  area  within  which  the  large  inmate  population  is  handled, 
are  all  obsolete  in  reformatory  designs  of  the  present  day.  Yet, 
because  of  the  very  large  financial  outlay  of  the  State  as  represented 
in  the  great  congerie  of  buildings  at  Elmira,  the  Reformatory 
continues  to  function  there,  although  the  treatment  would  be  far 
more  satisfactory,  and  probably  far  more  conducive  to  rehabilita- 
tion, were  the  Reformatory  upon  a  wide  acreage,  with  relatively 
small  group-buildings,  giving  the  chance  for  much  more  individual- 
ized treatment  of  inmates.  The  State  prisons  now  used  in 
Massachusetts,  Connecticut,  New  York  (Auburn  and  Sing  Sing) 
and  New  Jersey  were  all  built  nearly  a  century  ago. 

The  cost  of  the  Massachusetts  State  Prison,  which  is  the  subject 
of  this  chapter,  is  said  to  have  been  $170,000.* 

A  board  of  five  managers,  called  ''visitors,"  was  appointed  by 
the  Governor  and  his  Council.  Their  duties  were  similar  to  those 
of  the  boards  in  the  prisons  of  New  York  and  Philadelphia.  The 
industrial  activities  in  the  workshops  (located  wholly  within  the 
prison  yard,  122  feet  long  by  25  feet  wide)  were  also  similar  to 
the  earlier  prisons  heretofore  described.    Contract  labor  was  used 

8  Report  of  Society  for  Prevention  of  Pauperism,  p.  19. 
*  Pictures,  pp.  13ff. 


70  History  of  American  Prisons 

when  possible,  the  first  contract  being  let  in  1807,  when  William 
Little  engaged  the  labor  of  20  men,  to  work  at  a  plating  and  harness 
business,  paying  for  their  total  services  $40  a  week  for  the  first 
six  months,  and  $50  weekly  after  that.^  The  chief  industrial  occu- 
pations were  the  hammering  of  stone,  foundry  work,  blacksmith- 
ing,  shoemaking,  tailoring,  carpentry  and  paint-shop  work. 

The  dietary  for  the  week  was  thus  laid  down  by  the  board  of 
visitors :  ^ 

Sunday.  1  lb.  bread,  of  cheapest  materials;   1  lb.  coarse  meat,  made 

into  broth. 
Monday.  1  lb.  bread;   1  qt.  potatoes. 

Tuesday.  1  pt.  Indian    meal,     made    into    hasty    pudding;     l^^     gill 

molasses;  I  qt.  soup  made  of  fox  heads  and  offal. 
Wednesday.     Same  as  Monday. 

Thursday.        1  qt.  Indian  meal  made  into  hasty  pudding. 
Friday.  Same   as  Tuesday. 

Saturday.         ^^  lb.  bread;  4  oz.  salt  pork;  1  qt.  pea  or  bean  porridge. 

From  the  first,  the  prison  seems  to  have  been  a  center  of  severity, 
outbreaks,  and  escapes.  As  early  as  1809,  a  **  refractory  room^' 
was  established  in  the  basement,  25  feet  long,  grated  and  otherwise 
fortified. 

"Here  there  were  a  suitable  number  of  chains  for  the  legs,  and  of  a  proper 
strength,  to  be  worn  by  the  prisoners  confined  in  this  room." 

Financial  difficulties  were  present  from  the  first.  Many  resigna- 
tions and  appointments  to  the  boards  of  visitors  were  recorded, 
which  must  have  seriously  interfered  with  any  consistent  policy 
of  administration.  There  was  friction  with  the  officials  of  the 
State.  By  1810,  five  years  after  the  first  prisoner  was  admitted, 
the  total  cost  of  maintaining  the  prison  had  exceeded  the  receipts  by 
$50,238.^ 

However,  in  1811  we  read  of  a  secular  privilege  accorded,  apart 
from  school  work.  The  warden  was  directed  by  the  board  of 
visitors 

"to  indulge  the  prisoners  on  the  approaching  Thanksgiving  in  such  manner 
as  he  shall  judge  advisable,  not  exceeding  double  the  expense  of  their  usual 
fare.'' 

The  warden  was  also  instructed  to  arrange  for  a  Thanksgiving 
oration  by  a  citizen,  T.  Austin. 

One  of  the  problems  that  to-day  are  in  the  forefront  of  questions 
of  prison  administration  is  the  problem  of  recreation  for  prisoners. 
Indeed,  it  will  be  found  that  much  of  the  honor  system  is  based 
upon  the  conferring  of  recreational  privileges  in  return  for  the 
increased  responsibility  of  inmates  to  conduct  themselves  properly, 
work  better  and  not  attempt  to  escape.  The  visitor  to  a  modern 
prison  is  struck  forcibly  with  the  *' privileges "  enjoyed  by  many 
if  not  most  of  the  inmates.  These  privileges  are  largely  recrea- 
tional. There  are  occasionally  baseball  games  that  may  be  played, 
or  attended.    There  are  occasional  concerts  or  movie  shows  in  the 

5  Pictures,  pp.  13fiF. 
8  Pictures,  p.  18. 
'  Pictures. 


History  of  American  Prisons  71 

auditorium.  There  is  the  free  time  daily  in  the  yard.  There  is 
conversation  at  meals.  One  may  play  musical  instruments  in  the 
cells  at  certain  times  in  the  day  or  evening.  And  so  forth.  Even 
the  permission  to  have  occasional  visitors,  or  to  write  or  receive 
letters  from  outside,  or  to  wear  certain  articles  of  clothing  furnished 
from  the  outside,  are  all  recreational  privileges  in  the  larger  sense. 
They  alleviate  the  ordeal  of  imprisonment,  and  furnish  pleasure  to 
the  inmates  thereby  benefited. 

The  granting  of  recreational  privileges  has  been  found  in  these 
later  years  to  be  one  of  the  strongest  inducements  to  good  discipline 
that  can  be  employed.  To  bring  some  variety  into  the  monotony 
of  prison  life  through  actual  pleasures  has  been  equivalent  to 
putting  before  the  inmate  one  of  the  strongest  incentives  to  behave 
himself. 

When  shall  we  find  the  early  prisons  affording  to  the  inmate 
any  alleviations,  any  pleasures  ?  When  shall  we  discover  the  use 
of  the  desire  for  pleasures  on  the  part  of  the  inmate  capitalized, 
so  to  speak,  by  the  prison  administration?  Shall  we  find  that 
public  opinion  demands  so  strongly  the  punishment  and  the  actual 
terrorizing  of  the  prisoner,  that  no  admission  of  alleviating  recrea- 
tions and  pleasures  is  tolerated?  Shall  we  find  the  early  prisons 
such  edifices  as  fitly  to  bear  above  their  entrance  gates :  ' '  Abandon 
hope,  all  ye  who  enter  here ! ' ' 

Throughout  our  study  we  have  been  keen  to  discover  any 
approaches  on  the  part  of  wardens  to  an  individualistic  treatment 
of  the  inmates  such  as  is  to-day  a  marked  characteristic  of  so-called 
modern  wardens.  In  Massachusetts,  as  early  as  1811  we  find  record 
of  a  punishment  in  the  prison  savoring  of  the  old  Colonial  days  in 
that  State.  An  order  of  the  prison  board  of  visitors  recorded 
that 

"a  gallows  be  erected  in  the  prison  yard,  at  an  elevation  of  20  feet,  on 
which  certain  prisoners,  7  in  number,  shall  be  placed,  and  sit  with  a  rope 
around  their  necks  for  one  hour,  once  a  week,  for  three  successive  weeks; 
that  for  60  days  they  wear  an  iron  collar  and  chain  as  the  warden  shall 
direct;  and  that  they  wear  a  yellow  cap,  with  asses'  ears,  for  60  days;  and 
that  they  eat  at  a  table  by  themselves;  etc.,  etc.  The  sentence  shall  be  read 
in  the  hall  at  breakfast,  in  presence  of  all  the  prisoners.'** 

In  Massachusetts,  as  well  as  in  New  York,  certain  elementary 
efforts  to  grade  the  prisoners  were  made.  The  garb  of  the  convicts 
had  been,  until  about  1812,  one-half  red  and  one-half  blue.  Nothing 
much  more  ignominious  could  have  been  conceived.  The  second- 
termers  were  now  garbed  in  a  still  more  motley  fashion,  in  three- 
colored  garments,  distinguished  from  the  clothing  of  other  prisoners 
by  one  stripe  of  red,  one  of  yellow,  and  one  of  blue.  They  ate  at 
separate  tables,  apart  from  the  other  prisoners,  had  only  two  warm 
meals  a  day,  and  for  the  other  meal  only  bread  and  water,  except 
on  Sundays. 

Third-termers  were  dressed  in  four  colors,  one  stripe  of  yellow, 
one  of  red,  one  of  blue  and  one  of  black.  It  is  hard  to  form  a 
picture  of  such  an  inharmonious  combination  of  colors,  that  must 

8  Pictures,  p.  24. 


72  History  of  American  Prisons 

have  looked  like  a  prismatic  nightmare,  and  have  transformed  the 
inmate  into  a  deplorable  object.  The  wearer's  humiliation  and 
degradation  were  deliberately  sought  as  one  of  the  purposes  of  the 
prison  discipline.  Later,  undoubtedly  the  many-colored  stripes 
merged  into  the  stripes  of  black  which  became  in  prisons  the 
conventional  pattern,  alternating  with  the  white  stripes  or  the 
absence  of  color.  The  third-termers  also  ate  separately,  performed 
the  most  menial  and  hardest  labor,  and  were  allowed  to  see  their 
friends  only  twice  a  year. 

Still  worse  was  the  fate  of  the  retaken  convict  who  had  escaped. 
He  was  compelled  to  wear  an  iron  ring  on  the  left  leg,  to  which  a 
clog,  attached  by  a  chain,  was  suspended  during  the  entire  term  of 
the  prisoner. 

That  the  reaction  from  such  extreme  severity  —  to  say  nothing 
of  the  solitary  cells  that  were  used  for  more  customary  punishment 
—  was  such  as  to  fan  the  prisoners  to  continued  efforts  to  escape 
was  certain.  In  1813  there  was  an  effort  to  burn  the  workshops. 
For  this,  one  of  the  culprits  was  chained  to  a  ringbolt  for  24  hours. 
For  an  attempted  escape,  George  Lynds  was  compelled  to  wear  an 
iron  jacket  for  eight  days,  and  to  stand  in  the  broad  aisle  of  the 
chapel  with  the  same  on  two  successive  Sundays;  to  sleep  also  in 
solitary  confinement  for  90  days,  and  to  wear  a  clog  with  an  iron 
chain  for  82  days  afterwards. 

The  echoes  of  the  earlier  public  punishments  and  practices  in 
Colonial  times  are  evident  in  the  above.  Standing  the  culprit  in 
a  humiliating  position  before  the  gaze  of  the  public  was  customary, 
as  in  the  stocks,  the  pillory,  or  at  the  tail  of  a  cart.  The  public 
display  before  church-goers  on  Sunday  of  the  convicted  offender 
was  also  a  frequent  punishment,  and  the  stool  of  penance  directly 
below  the  minister's  pulpit,  and  in  full  view  of  the  congregation, 
was  a  well-known  punishment.  Chains  and  clogs  were  parapher- 
nalia of  the  past.  In  short,  we  find  in  these  Massachusetts  examples 
of  punishments  within  the  prison  a  ready  adaptation  of  the  older 
tried-and-true  public  punishments  of  the  days  before  State  prisons. 

In  the  following  year  the  punishment  for  a  serious  assault  was 
as  follows :  ^ 

"That  he  wear  an  iron  collar  round  his  neck  for  90  days  and  a  clog  on 
his  left  leg  for  6  months,  and  that  during  this  whole  time  he  be  chained 
to  his  work-bench;  that  he  sleep  in  solitary  confinement  for  6  months,  and 
that  during  that  period  he  receive  only  bread  and  water  for  his  supper;  that 
he  be  brought  into  the  inner  yard  on  the  four  succeeding  Saturdays,  between 
the  hours  of  three  and  five  in  the  afternoon,  and  be  placed  for  one  hour  on 
an  elevation,  and  a  label  on  his  breast  with  these  words:  'For  stabbing  two 
fellow  prisoners;  that  no  letter  pass  to  or  from  him,  or  that  any  relative 
or  friend  visit  him  during  his  confinement,  or  any  convict  speak  to  him;  and 
in  case,  during  the  performance  of  any  part  of  the  sentence,  he  be  guilty  of 
any  misconduct,  such  parts  of  the  sentence  as  have  been  inflicted  be  considered 
as  null,  and  he  shall  be  held  to  suffer  the  same  over  again." 

And  yet,  in  the  face  of  such  unmitigated  severity  of  treatment, 
we  find  the  board  of  visitors  announcing  in  its  description  of 

»  Pictures. 


History  of  American  Prisons  73 

the  prison,  in  1815,  that  the  keeper  should  always  have  in  view 
the  reformation  of  the  prisoner.  Among  the  rules  then  published 
were  the  following: 

Prisoners  must  not  be  struck  by  officers,  except  in  self-defense; 

Keepers  must  not  swear; 

The  principal  keeper  has  authority  to  punish  offenders  by  confinement  in 
their  own  rooms,  or  in  the  solitary  cells,  and  by  reduction  of  food. 

Force  is  allowed  only  in  self-defense,  or  when  the  security  of  the  prison  is 
in  danger. 

Ordinary  drinking  water  only  is  allowed  —  but  such  convicts  as  are 
employed  at  hardest  labor  may  be  indulged  in  small  beer  at  the  warden's 
discretion. 

Silence  is  required  of  convicts  when  at  work. 

Each  officer  shall  have  a  gun,  a  bayonet,  12  cartridges  with  ball,  and  the 
same  shall  be  kept  at  all  times  in  a  safe  and  convenient  place,  ready  for 
use.  Also  a  strong  and  heavy  cutlass,  to  be  used  as  a  side  arm,  shall  be 
worn  by  the  keepers  when  the  prisoners  are  at  work. 

Moreover,  the  board  went  on  record  in  1815  as  expressing  the 
hope  of  '' promoting  the  eternal  salvation  of  some  individuals,  of 
which  every  instance  is,  according  to  the  unerring  word  of  truth, 
a  more  important  object  than  the  gaining  of  the  whole  world.'' 
This  was  a  quotation  from  John  Howard.  But  in  the  same  year, 
the  board  of  visitors  stated  their  theory  of  prison  discipline : 

**It  should  be  as  severe  as  the  principles  of  humanity  will  possibly  permit. 
His  (the  prisoner's)  clothes  ought  to  be  a  means  of  punishment.  He  should 
be  cut  off  from  the  world,  and  know  nothing  of  what  is  happening  outside. 
Whenever  a  prisoner  transgresses,  he  should  be  punished  until  his  mind  is 
conquered.  Convicts  ought  to  be  brought  to  the  situation  of  clay  in  the 
hands  of  the  potter.  The  guards  should  consider  the  prisoner  as  a  volcano, 
containing  lava,  which  if  not  kept  in  subjection,  will  destroy  friends  and 
foe." 

This  was  reformation  by  terrorism.  It  was  no  wonder  that  the 
prison  was  at  all  times  a  ''volcano,  containing  lava."  The  wonder 
is  that  reformation  could  be  anticipated  under  such  conditions, 
which  in  effect  gave  over  to  the  executive  of  the  prison  almost 
entire  authority  to  do  as  he  pleased  with  the  inmates.  For  it  was 
early  found  possible  to  charge,  in  any  instance  that  might  be 
questioned,  that  the  guards  and  keepers  were  obliged  to  act  in 
self-defense. 

It  was  in  1815  that  the  differentiation  of  garb  for  the  several 
classes  of  prisoners  was  abolished,  and  the  costume,  one-half  red 
and  one-half  blue,  was  readopted.  Those  inmates  who  had  pre- 
viously been  confined  in  the  prison  wore  a  number  on  their  back, 
indicative  of  the  number  of  times  they  had  been  confined  in  the 
prison.  In  1816,  there  occurred  an  insurrection  of  the  convicts, 
and  16  men  got  over  the  walls ;  15  of  them  were  shortly  recaptured 
—  undoubtedly  to  undergo  the  punishments  described  above.  This 
outbreak  led  to  the  appointment  of  a  military  guard,  as  at  Newgate 
in  New  York,  but  after  two  years  it  was  discontinued. 

Up  to  this  time,  the  earnings  of  the  convicts  has  been  able  to 
meet  only  the  expense  of  their  maintenance.  This  was,  it  was  said, 
due  in  part  to  the  poor  physical  condition  of  the  inmates  on  their 
entrance  to  the  prison.     Many  prisoners  were  sent  to  prison  for 


74  History  of  American  Prisons 

short  terms,  or  from  long  distances,  and  only  a  small  proportion 
could  be  used  at  once  in  productive  employments,  even  if  there 
had  been  a  sufficiency  of  suitable  labor,  which  there  was  not.  The 
long  duration  of  terms  of  solitary  confinement  was  a  financial  loss 
to  the  prison.  Many  trades  had  been  experimented  with,  without 
result.  Shoemaking  was  practically  the  only  permanently  suitable 
occupation.  In  this  branch,  the  labor  of  the  convicts  was  sold 
at  from  40  to  50  cents  a  day.  Inmate  labor  was  let  to  contractors 
for  whatever  purpose  the  contractors  desired.  The  chief  trades  in 
operation,  and  the  number  of  convicts  employed  were  in  1816 
reported  to  be  as  follows : 

5hoemaking 38       Stone  hammering  31 

Weaving   31       Tailoring 17 

Spike  and  nail  making 26       Brushmaking   12 

Oakum  picking,  a  distinctly  primitive  occupation,  was  the  chief 
work  of  those  who  could  be  employed  at  nothing  else. 

Congestion  was  increasing,  as  in  Newgate  and  Walnut  street, 
with  similar  results.  By  1816,  300  convicts  were  living  promis- 
cuously in  the  Massachusetts  State  Prison.  In  some  of  the  rooms 
four  convicts,  in  others  eight,  were  lodged  without  any  supervision 
at  night.  The  records  of  this  year  show  the  presence  of  four 
inmates  under  the  age  of  14  years.  A  legislative  committee  in  1817 
recommended  that  because  of  the  intolerable  conditions  at  the 
prison,  it  be  either  abandoned  or  become  a  penitentiary  house  of 
the  type  urged  by  John  Howard.  Ninety  persons  were  at  the  time 
at  the  prison  under  commitment  for  a  second,  third  or  fourth  time. 

This  legislative  committee  held  that  the  State  Prison  should 
be  reserved  for  the  most  serious  offenders,  whose  terms  were  of 
three  years  and  more.  Women  and  juveniles  should  be  imprisoned 
in  county  jails  instead  of  being  sent  to  the  State  Prison.  The 
present  buildings  should  be  substantially  enlarged.  In  various 
sections  of  the  State  there  should  be  Bridewells  for  the  confinement 
of  lesser  offenders. 

One  of  the  chief  criticisms  by  the  committee  against  the  peniten- 
tiary system  in  this  and  other  States  was  its  expense.  It  was  said 
that  the  prisons  were  not  reforming  the  prisoners,  and  that  they 
were  not  supporting  themselves.  In  Pennsylvania,  with  a  popula- 
tion in  Walnut  Street  Prison  of  652  prisoners  in  December,  1816, 
the  year's  cost  for  the  maintenance  of  prisoners  was  $45,651;  the 
salaries  of  the  officers  amounted  to  $9,569.  The  value  of  the 
prisoners'  labor  was  but  $18,809.  In  short,  the  net  expense  of  the 
year  was  in  Philadelphia  $36,411. 

New  York,  with  a  prison  population  at  Newgate  of  753,  was 
losing  $40,000  a  year.  The  total  expense  of  erecting  and  supporting 
the  New  York  State  Prison  (Newgate)  was,  up  to  1827,  $l,237,343.i» 
Massachusetts,  with  an  average  prison  population  at  Charles  Town 
of  about  275,  lost  in  1816,  $13,000.  In  short,  the  committee  felt 
that  the  prison  was  in  no  way  a  success.  It  did  not  pay,  it  did  not 
reform,  it  did  not  prevent  recidivism,  and  it  was  an  increasing 

10  B.  p.  D.  S..  1827.  p.  113. 


History  of  American  Prisons  75 

scandal.  There  was  impending  in  Massachusetts  what  during  the 
same  period  impended  and  eventuated  in  Pennsylvania  and  New 
York  —  demoralization,  and  the  movement  for  a  sweeping  change 
in  the  system. 

We  meet,  however,  in  this  same  report,  a  suggestion  of  a  con- 
structive nature  as  to  the  after-care  of  released  prisoners  —  the 
first,  in  point  of  time,  that  we  have  discovered.  The  Committee  sug- 
gested that  there  should  be  erected  outside  the  walls  a  wooden 
building,  where  might  be  lodged  those  discharged  convicts  who 
were  entirely  destitute.  They  could  here  secure  lodgings  and  meals 
from  the  prison  at  a  cheap  rate,  and  have  a  chance  to  occupy 
themselves  at  their  trade  until  they  could  find  some  other 
employment. 

But  this  plan,  eminently  sensible  in  an  era  which  gave  no  official 
thought  whatsoever  to  the  prisoner,  once  he  had  passed  the  prison 
gate,  and  sent  him  out  with  little  or  no  money  with  which  to  try 
to  * '  make  good, ' '  found  deaf  ears  in  the  Legislature.  It  was  again 
an  idea  broached  far  before  its  time. 

The  commissioners  who  drafted  the  above-mentioned  report, 
obviously  borrowing  the  idea  from  New  York,  recommended  a 
reclassification  of  all  inmates  into  three  grades,  with  advancement 
or  degradation  at  the  discretion  of  the  board  of  visitors.  The 
suggestion  was  made  also  that  pardons  should  be  conferred  only 
from  the  first  grade.  This  project  was  actually  worked  into  law  in 
1818,  but  according  to  Haynes  the  classification  was  never  judi- 
ciously employed,  and  was  finally  dropped,  a  system  of  severity  and 
degradation  being  substituted.^^  A  labored  explanation  of  this 
action  was  given  in  the  report  of  the  board  of  visitors  for  1823. 
According  to  them,  economy  and  reformation  were  adverse  objects 
in  the  establishment  of  the  prison.  So  the  directors  had  tried  a 
middle  course,  not  sacrificing  all  hope  of  amendment  among  the 
convicts  for  a  little  increase  of  pecuniary  emolument  (in  the 
industries),  but,  on  the  other  hand,  not  following  the  illusory 
prospect  of  complete  reformation  by  sacrificing  to  such  a  theory 
all  regard  for  economy. 

The  board  said  flat-footedly  that  the  system  of  a  three-grade 
classification  was  impossible,  from  the  standpoint  of  reformation, 
and  that  it  was  made  solely  in  the  interest  of  finance,  to  secure 
greater  earning  power  for  the  institution.  Thus  was  a  radical 
and  constructive  project,  which  decades  afterwards  in  another 
form  became  one  of  the  bases  of  the  American  reformatory  system, 
calmly  and  with  complete  lack  of  insight  dismissed ! 

Much  of  the  ingenuity  that  might  have  gone  into  the  successful 
development  of  such  a  plan  as  the  above  seems  to  have  been  given 
over  to  the  devising  of  new  forms  of  punishment.  In  1822  the 
feasibility  of  installing  a  * '  treadmill ' '  was  considered.  This  ingen- 
ious instrument  of  English  origin  operated  upon  the  principle 
familiar  in  the  dog  churn  or  the  squirrel's  wheel.  The  luckless 
convicts  must  tread  for  a  specific  time  daily  this  * '  discipline  mill. '  * 

"  Pictures. 


76  History  of  American  Prisons 

The  power  therefrom  was  to  be  used  in  the  grinding  of  corn.  When 
it  was  found  that  an  average  of  but  one  bushel  a  convict  per  day 
would  be  secured,  the  plan  was  dropped,  not  because  it  was  a  hard 
task  for  the  convict,  but  for  its  uneconomical  features. 

The  first  record  of  a  recreational  feature  we  find  at  this  period. 
In  a  report  of  the  Massachusetts  House  of  Representatives  it  was 
stated  that  inmates  in  the  rooms  lodging  from  6  to  10  convicts 
were  allowed  occasionally  the  use  of  musical  instruments,  with 
lights  in  their  rooms. 

The  Prison  Discipline  Society  of  Boston  showed  in  1826  that 
the  prison  population  was  increasing  faster,  relatively,  than  the 
population  of  the  State.  Furthermore,  with  a  colored  population 
in  the  State  of  less  than  7,000,  and  with  only  one-seventy-fourth 
of  the  population  in  the  State  colored,  there  were  50  colored  convicts 
in  the  prison,  in  a  total  population  of  314,  or  approximately  one- 
sixth.  This  proportion  was  similar  to  the  proportions  in  other 
States. 

The  record  of  escapes  and  outbreaks  continued  in  similar  fashion 
until  1829,  at  which  time  the  north  wing  of  the  new  prison  building 
was  constructed  by  the  labor  of  convicts,  and  the  institution  began 
to  operate  upon  the  ** Auburn  plan."  And  it  was  only  in  this 
year  that  the  custom  ceased  of  branding,  on  their  discharge,  the 
''repeaters"  at  the  Massachusetts  State  Prison  with  the  letters 
M.  S.  P.  upon  the  arm.^^  Again  a  survival  of  the  brutal  directness 
of  maiming  and  mutilating  punishments  of  the  Colonial  period  in 
Massachusetts ! 

"Laws  of  the  Commonwealth,  1829. 


CHAPTER  IX 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  AUBURN  SYSTEM 

When  in  1910  the  International  Prison  Congress,  composed  of 
representatives  from  all  over  the  world  of  those  who  deal  most 
intelligently  and  scientifically  with  the  problems  of  crime  and 
abnormal  behavior,  convened  for  the  first  time  in  the  United  States, 
a  special  train,  furnished  by  the  United  States  Government,  con- 
veyed the  delegates  from  over  a  score  of  nations  to  the  principal 
prisons  and  reformatories  of  the  United  States  on  a  tour  of 
inspection  and  study. 

No  prison  was  more  eagerly  visited  than  Auburn  Prison  in  the 
city  of  like  name,  in  the  State  of  New  York.  For  it  was  here  in  the 
west  central  part  of  the  Empire  State,  that  during  the  third  decade 
of  the  nineteenth  century  a  system  of  prison  administration  arose 
that  has  for  a  century  wielded  an  enormous  and  preponderating 
influence  upon  prisons  and  reformatories  throughout  this  country, 
and  has  made  its  influence  constantly  felt  in  other  lands.  The 
** silent  system"  of  Auburn  Prison  is  perhaps  the  best  known  his- 
torical feature  of  American  prison  history. 

Auburn  Prison  produced  a  type  of  cellblock  and  of  administra- 
tion that  traveled  the  country  over,  found  numberless  imitators, 
and  conditioned  prison  architecture  for  nearly  a  century  in  this 
country.    The  two  most  recent  examples  of  completed  State  prisons 

—  in  New  York,  at  Great  Meadow,  and  in  Minnesota,  at  Stillwater 

—  are  conspicuous  examples  of  the  developed  '' Auburn  plan"  of 
cellular  architecture,  in  which  the  cells  are  enclosed  within  a  great 
containing  building,  the  cells  being  back  to  back,  several  tiers  in 
height,  and  therefore  designated  as  the  ''inside-cell"  type  of  con- 
struction. They  are  of  steel,  large,  airy,  and  sanitary,  in  contrast 
to  the  early  cramped,  dark,  half-airless,  unsanitary  cells  of  the 
original  Auburn  wing.  But  the  relationship  is  there  —  and  it  is 
against  that  century-old  type  of  cellblock  architecture  that  during 
the  last  decade  a  spirited  fight  has  been  waged  in  our  country  for 
a  more  individualistic,  humaner,  more  private  kind  of  cell.  Of  all 
this  we  shall  speak  in  detail  when  we  come  to  a  discussion  of  the 
celebrated  contest  between  the  advocates  of  the  ''Auburn  system" 
and  the  "Pennsylvania  system,"  that  developed  when  the  new 
prisons  in  New  York  and  Pennsylvania  were  opened,  and  when 
two  entirely  different  forms  of  construction  and  administration 
engaged  the  active  interest  and  attention  of  State  after  State, 
desperately  hunting  for  some  form  of  prison  regime,  and  architec- 
ture that  would  meet  the  needs  of  a  commonwealth  in  despair  at 
the  demoralization  of  an  older  system,  tried  and  found  wholly 
wanting. 

The  period  of  prison  administration  that  we  are  now  entering, 
the  decade  from  1820  to  1830,  is  perhaps  as  engrossing  to  the 

[77] 


78  History  of  American  Prisons 

student  of  prison  matters  as  any  period  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
It  is  the  decade  in  which  our  prison  system  develops  a  second  time 
with  striking  rapidity,  and  in  which  administration  becomes  organ- 
ized and  standardized  for  the  first  time  —  so  definitely  standard- 
ized, indeed,  that  a  century  has  hardly  sufiiced  to  change  many  of 
the  methods  and  habits  then  instituted.  Indeed,  American  prisons 
cannot  be  understood  with  any  clearness  unless  this  particular 
period  is  understood.  Origins  of  the  majority  of  even  recent  prison 
practices  in  administration  can  be  traced  back  to  this  decade.  It 
is  the  era  that  the  popular  mind  has  supposed  gave  birth  to  the 
American  prison  system.  Yet,  as  we  shall  see,  this  is  the  decade 
in  which  the  insurgent  and  reactionary  movement  against  the 
failure  of  the  first  prison  system  found  its  expression,  and  in  which 
the  pendulum  swung  to  such  an  opposite  extreme  that  there  was 
fastened  upon  this  country  a  system  replete  with  severity,  regu- 
larity, perpetual  silence,  and  the  domination  by  the  prison  author!^ 
ties  of  the  inmate 's  body  and  spirit. 

Within  relatively  few  years  of  1816,  when  the  State  of  New  York 
began  the  construction  at  Auburn  of  the  new  prison  for  the  western 
part  of  the  State,. the  ** Auburn  system"  was  already  hailed  as  the 
long-hoped-for  solution  of  all  penological  ills.  It  had  the  beauty 
of  a  finely  functioning  machine.  It  had  reduced  the  human  beings 
within  the  prison  to  automata.  In  less  than  ten  years  from  the 
date  of  its  origin,  it  had  already  become  a  model.  In  1826,  the 
Prison  Discipline  Society  of  Boston  (a  philanthropic  organization, 
that  had  just  sprung  into  existence)  asked  in  its  first  annual 
report :  ^ 

**What  could  with  propriety  be  done  for  criminals  that  is  not  done  at 
Auburn?  Here  is  exhibited  what  Europe  and  America  have  long  been  waiting^ 
to  see,  a  prison  which  may  be  a  model  of  imitation." 

In  the  United  States,  Sing  Sing  Prison  has  enjoyed  the  perhaps 
doubtful  fame  of  being  the  best-known  penal  institution,  and  alsa 
perhaps  the  most  notorious.  But  it  was  Auburn  —  and  the  Eastern, 
Penitentiary  of  Pennsylvania  —  to  which  distinguished  European 
visitors,  studying  prison  administration,  came  in  the  period  between 
1830  and  1840.  France,  England,  Prussia  and  Canada  studied  our 
contributions  to  penology.  It  was  our  American  institutions  that 
conditioned  in  large  measure  the  subsequent  construction  of  English 
and  Continental  prisons. 

And,  finally,  it  was  by  the  working  out  of  poetic  justice  — if 
such  a  term  may  be  used  in  prison  history  —  in  Auburn  Prison,, 
where  the  famous  system  had  had  its  birth,  that  Thomas  Mott 
Osborne  in  1913  and  1914  gave  to  many  of  the  stupid  and  cruel 
remnants  of  that  original  system,  handed  down  through  the  century 
and  flourishing  lustily  not  ten  years  ago,  their  death  blow.^ 

Let  us  therefore  approach  with  especial  interest  this  period  of 
unusual  historical  import.  It  was  revolt  against  the  appalling 
failure  of  an  earlier  penitentiary  system  that  led  to  the  surprising 
developments  of  the  new  system.     Indeed,  as  de  Beaumont  and 

1  B.  p.  D.  S.,  1826,  p.  27. 

8  T.  M.  Osborne.    "  Within  Prison  Walls." 


History  of  American  Prisons  79 

de  Tocqueville,  sagacious  and  sympathetic  critics  of  our  American 
prison  systems  in  the  thirties  of  the  nineteenth  century,  said,  the 
experiences  of  Walnut  street  in  Philadelphia  and  Newgate  in  New 
York,  and  Charlestown  in  Massachusetts  had  led,  not  to  a  peniten- 
tiary system,  hut  to  a  had  system  of  imprisonment,^  a  system  which 
was 

**in  general  ruinous  to  the  public  treasury;  it  never  effected  the  reforma- 
tion of  the  prisoners;  every  year  the  legislature  of  each  State  voted  consider- 
ble  sums  toward  the  support  of  the  penitentiaries,  and  the  continued  return 
of  the  same  individuals  into  the  prisons  proved  the  inefficiency  of  the  system 
to  which  they  were  submitted." 

However,  Auburn  Prison  did  not  start  as  an  iconoclastic,  insur- 
gent institution.  It  was  no  deviation,  at  first,  from  the  conventional 
construction  of  the  times.  That  part  of  it  which  was  built  between 
1816  and  1819  was  put  up  on  traditional  lines.  It  contained  28 
rooms,  each  intended  to  house  from  8  to  12  prisoners.  There  were, 
in  addition,  61  cells,  each  destined  for  one  convict,  or  for  two  if 
necessary  * —  a  powerful  invitation  to  vice  and  dishonesty. 

The  first  warden  of  Auburn  was  Captain  William  Brittin, 
appointed  in  1818.  His  principal  keeper  —  the  disciplinarian  and 
general  routine  manager  of  the  prison  —  was  Captain  Elam  Lynds. 
Captain  Brittin  was  a  master  carpenter,  who  had  been  at  first 
employed  by  the  commissioners  to  build  the  prison.  Captain  Lynds 
we  shall  find  to  be  the  outstanding  figure  in  American  prison 
history  during  the  decade  from  1820  to  1830,  and  one  of  the  men 
still  quoted  as  a  pioneer. 

The  prison  was  governed  by  a  board  of  five  inspectors,  residing 
iaJJ^  village  of  Auburn,  and  appointed  for  two  years  by  the 
Oovernbr  and  the  Senate.  They  received  no  compensation.  They 
appointed  the  *  *  agent  and  keeper, ' '  the  two  offices  being  combined, 
and  designated  by  us  in  this  study  by  the  generic  term :  ''Warden.'* 

In  1819,  the  Legislature  of  New  York,  on  the  recommendation 
of  Governor  DeWitt  Clinton,®  ordered  the  erection  at  Auburn 
Prison  of  an  additional  wing,  made  up  wholly  of  solitary  cells. 
This  northern  wing  was  finished  in  1821.  The  present  American 
prison  system  grew  out  of  those  solitary  cells  at  Auburn  Prison. 
It  was  this  new  wing  that  became  the  model  for  American  prisons. 
In  1821,  Captain  Brittin  died,  and  Captain  Lynds,  who  had  been 
a  hatmaker  in  Auburn,^  was  appointed  agent  and  keeper  —  a  com- 
bination really  of  two  functions,  and  a  title  that  has  survived  until 
to-day  in  New  York  State  prisons. 

In  the  earliest  years  of  the  new  prison  at  Auburn,  the  wages 
were  small,  and  the  dangers  great.  Captain  Brittin,  for  being 
both  warden  and  master  carpenter,  received  an  annual  salary  of 
$1,800,  but  other  wages  were  as  follows : 

Deputy  Keeper  $450      Chaplain  125 

Clerk   450      Surgeon    200 

Turnkey    350 

2  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  p.  22. 

*  B.  and  T.,  footnote,  p.  4.     Also  Julius.     S.  Z.,  p.  141. 

"Julius.     S.  Z..  p.  142. 

«  Governor's  Message  in  Journal  of  New  York  Assembly,  1819,  p.  18. 


80  History  of  American  Prisons 

In  1819,  three  years  after  the  establishment  of  the  prison,  while 
construction  was  still  going  on,  the  board  of  inspectors,  alarmed  at 
the  possibility  of  outbreaks,  recommended  the  organization  in  the 
village  of  Auburn  of  an  independent  company  of  militia,  to  be 
composed  of  30  privates  and  several  officers,  whose  duty  it  should 
be  to  assemble  at  the  first  alarm  and  rush  to  the  prison.  Indeed, 
both  Captain  Brittin  and  Captain  Lynds  had  been  officers  in  the 
recent  war  with  Great  Britain. 

In  1821,  the  New  York  Legislature  made  mandatory  a  three-fold 
grading  of  inmates  at  Auburn  prison,  in  an  effort  to  rectify  prison 
abuses.  The  first  class  was  composed  of  the  most  hardened  and 
vicious  criminals,  who  were  to  be  confined  to  solitary  confinement, 
without  any  labor  whatsoever  to  distract  their  minds.  The  second 
class,  more  corrigible,  were  to  alternate  between  solitary  confine- 
ment, and  labor  as  a  recreation.  The  third  class,  being  the  most 
hopeful,  were  to  work  in  association  during  the  day,  and  to  be  in 
seclusion  at  night. 

Here  was  a  new  method  proposed  for  classification  —  one  that 
became  in  time,  so  far  as  the  third  class  of  inmates  was  concerned, 
a  standard  for  the  entire  country,  with  the  exception  of  one  prison, 
the  Eastern  Penitentiary  of  Pennsylvania,  which  adhered  to 
absolute  separation  of  each  inmate  from  the  other  at  all  times.  No 
prison  prior  to  the  plan  proposed  for  Auburn  Prison  had  worked 
its  inmates  during  the  day  in  association,  and  locked  them  up  in 
separate  cells  at  night.  Exactly  this  combination  of  day-association 
and  night-separation  became  the  keystone  of  the  Auburn  system?^ 

Who  the  inventor  of  this  method  of  classification  was  is  lost  in 
doubt.  Even  in  1832,  when  de  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville  pub- 
lished their  account  of  their  studies  of  American  penal  institutions, 
they  could  not  dispel  the  obscurity.  The  noted  French  visitors 
asked  whether  it  might  not  have  been  Governor  De  Witt  Clinton, 
or  Mr.  Cray  (one  of  the  board  of  inspectors),  or  Captain  Brittin, 
who,  according  to  Gershom  •  Powers  (himself  a  later  warden  at 
Auburn)  was  largely  the  initiator  of  the  Auburn  methods  of  prison 
construction  and  of  discipline.  Or  was  it  Captain  Lynds,  to  whom 
public  opinion  at  the  time  seems  to  have  attributed  the  system? 
According  to  Julius,  the  Prussian  scholar  who  in  1839  published 
hi^  study  of  American  social  conditions,  Cray  developed  the 
Auburn  system  in  1823,^  after  the  tragic  failure  of  the  system 
of  solitary  confinement,  which  we  shall  shortly  describe. 

And  who  was  the  inventor  of  the  Auburn  type  of  prison  build- 
ing, which  became  the  standard  type  of  structure  for  practically 
all  American  prison  cellblocks  for  nearly  a  century  ?  Even  to-day, 
the  great  new  prisons  at  Great  Meadow,  New  York,  and  Stillwater, 
Minnesota,  are  but  the  latest  developments  of  the  original  Auburn 
type  of  ' '  interior  cellblock ' ' ;  they  have  an  abundance  of  light  and 
air,  and  their  cells  are  of  steel  and  of  considerable  size,  radical 
improvements  in  every  way  upon  the  catacomb-like  pile  of  masonry 

'  Julius.    Sittleche  Zusbaende,  Vol.  II,  p.  142. 


History  of  American  Prisons  81 

of  the  original  cellblock  at  Auburn.     But  the  line  of  descent  is 
direct.    Where  did  the  type  arise  ?    Was  it  original  with  Auburn  ? 
Who  was  the  builder,  and  what  were  his  models  ? 
Gershom  Powers  wrote  thus,  in  1828: 

**I  know  not  who  was  justly  entitled  to  the  distinguished  credit  of  having 
discovered  the  invaluable  principle  upon  which  our  north  wing  of  cells  is 
constructed.  Captain  Brittin  claimed  it  during  his  lifetime,  and  his  friends 
for  him,  after  his  death.  Another  master  builder,  now  of  Montreal,  also 
made  the  same  claim,  which  was  said  to  have  been  favored  by  the  opinion 
of  Governor  Clinton.  Captain  Brittin  however,  was  the  first  who  applied  the 
principle  practically,  and  constructed  the  first  block  of  cells  upon  the  present 
general  plan.'* 

It  is  noteworthy  that  no  mention  is  made  by  Powers  of  any  par- 
ticipation in  this  plan  by  Captain  Lynds,  to  whom  much  of  the 
creation  of  the  Auburn  plan  and  system  has  been  attributed. 
Doctor  Julius,  a  visitor  from  Prussia,  wrote  on  his  return  to  Prussia 
in  1833  that  the  American  reformatory  system,  **  concerning  which 
there  has  been  so  much  talk  in  Europe  during  the  last  forty  years,'* 
was,  so  far  as  the  Auburn  system  was  concerned,  undertaken  at 
the  prison  in  Ghent  in  Flanders  in  1791,  on  the  lines  laid  down  by 
Count  Vilain  XIV,  and  was  introduced  into  America  in  1820  by 
the  building  of  the  north  wing  of  Auburn  Prison. 

For  the  Ghent  prison  maintained  separate  confinement  of  prison- 
ers at  night,  associated  work  during  the  day,  and  perpetual  silence. 
It  is  hardly  to  be  doubted  that  echoes  of  the  Ghent  system,  described 
and  discussed  in  many  European  treatises  of  the  time,  reached 
this  country.  John  Howard  had  described  Ghent  as  a  model  prison 
in  structure  and  administration.  Gloucester  Prison  in  England 
was  authorized  in  1785,  and  maintained  separation  of  prisoners 
day  and  night.  Milbank  Prison  in  London  was  built  in  1812  on  a 
modified  Howard  plan.  Here,  solitary  confinement  was  complete. 
Yet  we  find  Governor  Everett  of  Massachusetts  stating  in  1836  that 
there  was  no  evidence  that  the  Ghent  plan  awoke  general  attention, 
or  that  it  was  imitated  elsewhere  than  in  Europe. 

In  1821,  in  obedience  to  the  Legislature,  and,  ironically  enough, 
on  Christmas  Day,  eighty  of  the  worst  convicts  within  the  new 
prison,  almost  half  of  the  total  population,  were  condemned  hence- 
forth to  silence  and  to  solitude  without  work,  and  with  no  com- 
panion save  the  Bible.  Let  us  recall  that  three  years  before  in 
Pennsylvania,  the  decision  had  been  reached  to  erect  a  prison  at 
Pittsburg  on  the  same  basis  of  administration. 

The  board  of  inspectors  of  Auburn  Prison  pledged  their  adher- 
ence to  their  **new  system"  in  the  following  words  in  1821  —  a 
profession  of  penological  faith  that  for  deliberate  elimination  of 
hope  can  scarcely  be  equalled : 

**The  end  and  design  of  the  law  is  the  prevention  of  crimes,  through  fear 
of  punishment,  the  reformation  of  offenders  being  of  minor  consideration. 
.  .  .  Let  the  most  obdurate  and  guilty  felons  be  immured  in  solitary 
cells  and  dungeons;  let  them  have  pure  air,  wholesome  food,  comfortable 
clothing,  and  medical  aid  when  necessary;  cut  them  off  from  all  intercourse  y 
with  men;  let  not  the  voice  or  face  of  a  friend  ever  cheer  them;  let  them 
walk  their  gloomy  abodes,  and  commune  with  their  corrupt  hearts  and  guilty 
consciences  in  silence,  and  brood  over  the  horrors  of  their  solitude,  and  the 
enormity  of  their  crimes,  without  the  hope  of  executive  pardon." 


82  History  of  American  Prisons 

One  has  but  to  ask  himself  how  long,  under  such  unvarying  sepa- 
ration from  all  human  contact  and  feelings,  one  would  retain  his 
faith,  and  even  his  sanity?  Indeed,  this  sentence  to  nothing  less 
than  a  living  death,  and  to  the  perpetual  horrors  of  solitude  without 
anything  to  do,  drove  irresistibly  toward  madness.  By  the  end 
of  a  year  and  a  half : 

**a  number  of  the  convicts  became  insane  while  in  solitude;  one  was  so  des- 
perate that  he  sprang  from  his  cell,  when  the  door  was  opened,  and  threw 
himself  from  the  gallery  upon  the  pavement,  which  nearly  killed  him,  and  he 
y  undoubtedly  would  have  destroyed  his  life  instantly,  had  not  an  intervening 
stovepipe  broken  the  force  of  his  fall.  Another  beat  and  mangled  his  head 
against  the  walls  of  his  cell  until  he  destroyed  one  of  his  eyes. ' '  * 

Such  an  outcome  hondfied^tbe. State.  Governor  Yates,  who  on 
an  official  visit  to  Auburn  Prison  had  been  an  eye-witness  to  this 
alarming  physical  and  mental  result  of  the  eighteen  months  of 
solitary  confinement  of  these  miserable  victims  of  a  new  theory 
of  punishment  ordered  the  abandonment  of  the  system.  By  the 
end  of  1823  he  had  pardoned  most  of  the  survivors.  But  the  end 
of  the  gruesome  story  was  not  yet,  for  though  they  had  gone  out 
of  the  prison  on  the  ground  that  they  had  had  sufficient  punishment, 
the  subsequent  careers  of  many  of  the  released  men  were  criminal 
ones.  The  terrible  effects  of  constant  solitude  had  not  made  them 
honest,  but  they  had  been  broken.  One  released  inmate  committed 
a  burglary  on  the  first  night  of  his  release.  Twelve  of  the  released 
men  were  ultimately  reconvicted  and  returned  to  Auburn.^ 

Here  was  a  noteworthy  and  notorious  trial  of  the  effects  of 
solitary  confinement.  Method  after  method  had  now  been  tried  in 
prison  administration,  and  had  been  found  wanting  in  beneficent 
results.  The  humane  discipline  of  the  early  Quakers  at  Walnut 
Street  had  eventuated  in  partisan  politics,  the  evils  of  congestion, 
and  the  demoralization  of  the  inmates.  The  rigors  of  Newgate  in 
Connecticut  had  become  a  scandal  in  the  community.  Massachu- 
setts, with  severity  of  treatment  and  a  disregard  of  reformative 
methods,  had  developed  a  prison  that  was  also  a  scandal.  And 
now,  with  the  extreme  application  of  solitary  confinement  without 
labor,  only  a  year  and  a  half  was  needed  to  prove  that,  literally, 
madness  lay  that  way.    What  was  now  to  be  the  solution? 

Nor,  were  other  States  more  successful  in  their  experiments  with 
solitary  confinement.  In  Virginia,  when  the  Governor  ceased  to 
pardon  convicts,  it  was  stated  that  in  no  case  did  any  convict  sur- 
vive a  serious  attack  of  disease.  Their  only  hope  in  the  enduring 
of  their  misery  had  been  the  ultimate  possibility  of  freedom  through 
a  pardon.  In  the  State  prison  of  Maine,  at  Thomaston,  wherein 
the  law  provided  for  the  solitary  confinement  of  certain  convicts 
during  long  periods,  the  prison  physician  stated  that  the  majority 
of  such  inmates  spent  more  than  half  their  term  of  confinement  in 
the  prison  hospital,  it  being  the  custom  of  that  prison  to  take  the 
inmates  from  the  solitary  cells  to  the  hospital,  in  order  to  restore 
them  sufficiently  to  be  again  placed  in  solitary  confinement !  ^^ 

8  Gershom  Powers.     General  Description  of  Auburn  Prison,  1826,  p.  83. 

»  Powers,  p.  83. 

10  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1827. 


History  of  American  Prisons  8^ 

We  do  not  believe  it  necessary  to  take  time,  to-day,  to  argue  the 
barbarous  and  futile  nature  of  long-enduring  solitary  confinement 
without  labor.  Only  the  exceptionally  strong-minded  or  the  greatly 
dulled  intelligence  might  seemingly  endure  such  confinement  long. 

That  way,  disease  and  madness  lay.  Yet,  so  violent  were  the 
reaction  and  the  indignation  against  the  then  prevailing  abomina- 
tions of  the  older  prisons,  where  inmates  congregated  in  idleness, 
that  eminent  citizens  like  Roberts  Vaux  of  Philadelphia,  and  a 
representative  senate  committee  of  New  York,  recommended  such 
absolute  separation  of  the  most  hardened  convicts,  not  only  from 
each  other,  but  from  any  chance  of  employment.^^ 

Even  Edward  Livingston,  distinguished  jurist  and  author  of  the 
remarkable  draft  of  a  penal  code  and  a  code  of  prison  discipline 
for  Louisiana  in  the  twenties  of  the  nineteenth  century,  was  a  strong 
advocate  of  silent  and  uninterrupted  separation  of  convicts,  without 
work.  There  was  great  theorizing  in  matters  of  penology  at  this 
period.  Was  it  not  known  that  the  martyrs  and  the  political 
intriguers  had  endured  constant  solitary  confinement  for  years? 
To  which  argument  Gershom  Powers,  warden  of  Auburn  Prison, 
replied  in  1828  that  the  example  of  martyrs  and  patriots  who  had 
endured  similar  conditions  successfully  was  no  criterion,  because 
such  persons  are  sustained  by  devotion  to  liberty  or  to  religion  in 
a  righteous  cause,  while  the  criminal  has  no  high  moral  sanction 
to  lend  strength  to  his  struggle  for  endurance.^^ 

In  the  last  analysis,  however,  the  agitation  for  the  establishment 
of  such  solitary  confinement  was  caused  by  the  realization  that  • 
something  had  to  be  done  to  secure  a  prison  system  that  would 
work !  In  the  prison  at  Auburn,  prior  to  the  experiment  in  solitary 
confinement,  conditions  had  been  atrocious.  Pardon-brokerage  was  - 
the  steady  and  profitable  business  of  many  persons.  In  1821,  41 
convicts  had  been  pardoned,  and  only  9  convicts  were  discharged 
by  expiration  of  their  sentence.  Moreover,  the  discipline  of  the 
prison  had  become  very  lax.  In  1882,  75  convicts  who  had  been 
sent  away  some  miles  from  the  prison  to  work  on  the  '*  Great 
Canal"  that  was  then  being  constructed  through  the  State,  all 
escaped.^^  Therefore  the  inspectors  stated,  in  all  soberness,  that  in 
their  new  effort  to  make  prison  life  and  its  punishments  terroristic, 
they  were  attempting  the  salvation  of  the  prisoner. 

The  long-expected  was  also  happening.  It  was  now  often  being 
urged  that  there  should  be  a  general  return  to  bloody  and  grievous 
corporal  punishments,  or  to  a  wide  extension  of  the  use  of  capital 
punishment.  Or  even  to  transportation  to  some  distant  part  of 
the  United  States,  or  to  some  lone  island  in  the  Pacific.^^  The 
relative  leniency  of  the  first  prison  system,  followed  by  such  a 
discouraging  succession  of  failures  of  treatment,  was  already  there- 
fore in  danger  of  being  superseded  by  an  abhorrent  revival  of 
medieval  methods  of  punishment. 

1^  Letter  from  Gershom  Powers,  etc. 

12  Report  of  New  York  Senate  Comm.,  1823. 

18  Report  on  Penitentiary  System,  1822,  p.  76ff. 

"  Reports  of  the  Inspectors. 


84  History  of  American  Prisons 

Thomas  Eddy,  who  as  we  know  had  been  the  first  warden  of 
the  New  York  State  Prison,  and  who  was  renowned  as  a  philan- 
thropist, adhered  to  the  then  accepted  theory  of  rigorous  discipline 
of  convicts.  In  a  document  citing  the  fourth  annual  report  of  the 
London  Society  for  the  Improvement  of  Prison  Discipline,  he 
quoted  the  European  authority : 

"The  committee  are  of  the  opinion  that  severe  punishment  must  form  the 
basis  of  an  effective  system  of  prison  discipline.  The  personal  sufferings 
of  the  offender  must  be  the  first  consideration,  as  well  for  his  own  interest 
as  for  the  sake  of  example.  The  Society  (of  London)  recommends  a  system 
/of  hard  labor  and  regular  employment,  a  system  in  which  spare  diet  and 
occasional  solitary  confinement  and  habits  of  order  and  silence  are  steadily 
enforced. ' ' 

It  is  easy  to  see  from  the  above  how  sanction  was  secured  for 
the  unmitigated  severities  of  the  Auburn  system,  which  within 
comparatively  few  years  was  found  to  depend,  for  its  continued 
success,  upon  the  lash.  Furthermore,  the  London  Society  argued 
that  the  prisoners  should  not  be  allowed  to  share  in  their  earnings, 
because  the  hope  of  recompense  would  mitigate  the  severity  of 
their  punishment! 

"It  is  as  unwarrantable  to  mitigate  the  force,  and  soften  tlie  rigour,  of 
that  punishment  which  the  laws  inflict,  as  to  increase  its  penalties.  It 
never  can  be  proper  that  the  criminal  should  quit  confinement  with  emolument 
derived  from  conduct,  which  the  discipline  of  the  prison  should  compel  him 
to  maintain  ...  If  prisoners  expend  a  portion  of  their  earnings  in 
food,  the  efficacy  of  restricted  diet  is  counteracted,  and  frequently  wholly 
lost.'' 

In  short,  there  was  being  evolved,  as  we  shall  more  clearly  see 
in  the  pages  to  come,  a  system  of  discipline  in  which  the  convict 
•was  deprived  of  any  inducements  whatsoever  to  conduct  himself 
properly  in  prison,  save  that  he  might  escape  actual  physical 
punishments.  The  prison  was  to  be,  in  brief,  a  place  of  terror. 
Yet,  the  London  Society  conceded  that  on  the  discharge  of  the 
convict,  he  might  be  furnished  some  relief  in  cash. 

At  this  psychological  moment  events  occurred,  which  together 
undoubtedly  went  far  to  determine  the  course  of  prison  history  for 
the  century  to  follow.  The  first  influence  was  the  report  of  the 
^  Senate  Committee  of  1822,  relative  to  the  reorganization  of  the 
State  Prison  in  New  York,  which  we  have  already  discussed  in 
the  chapter  on  Newgate  in  New  York.     (Page  43.) 

The  second  influence  was  the  publication  of  a  detailed  report 
by  the  New  York  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Pauperism  in 
1^1822  on  the  Penitentiary  System  of  the  United  States.  The  third 
factor  was  the  independent  and  aggressive  effort  being  made  within 
Auburn  Prison  itself  to  arrive  at  a  workable  system  of  prison 
administration. 

The  New  York  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Pauperism  organ- 
^ized  1818  or  1819,  was  an  association  of  representative  citizens  in 
New  York  city,  who  had  been  led  into  the  study  of  crime  and 
delinquency  through  their  inquiries  into  the  causes  of  pauperism. 
This  Society  played,  as  we  shall  see  in  a  later  chapter,  a  very 
important  role  in  the  foundation  of  the  House  of  Refuge  in  New 


A 


History  of  American  Prisons  85 

York,  the  first  juvenile  reformatory  in  the  United  States.  We 
shall  now  discuss  the  special  report  of  a  committee  of  this  Society- 
published  in  1822,  and  containing  a  wealth  of  material  gathered 
from  governors,  wardens,  inspectors,  and  many  other  citizens.  We 
have  here  one  of  the  earliest  surveys  of  a  social  problem  in  the 
field  of  delinquency  by  a  civic  and  philanthropic  organization. 

The  report  of  the  committee,  after  arraigning  with  cumulative 
and  undeniable  facts  the  prevailing  prison  conditions,  held  it 
imperative  that  a  new  system  of  prison  discipline  should  be  estab- 
lished, in  which  the  principal  elements  should  be: 

Solitary  confinement. 

Hard  labor. 

Moral  instruction  and  discipline. 

The  committee  maintained,  in  amplification  of  the  above,  that  the^ 
internal  structure  of  existing  prisons  should  be  so  changed  as  to  \ 
provide  the  largest  number  of  single  and  separate  cells.  Solitary  / 
confinement  of  prisoners  without  labor  should  be  resorted  to  only  / 
for  a  certain  length  of  time  in  the  case  of  hardened  convicts,  or  for  / 
punishment.  All  other  prisoners  should  work  in  their  cells.  For  ( 
each  prisoner  there  must  be  provided,  therefore,  a  separate  cell.  \ 
This  plan,  we  would  mention  here,  was  the  one  finally  adopted  I 
and  exemplified  in  the  administration  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  y 
of  Pennsylvania  in  Philadelphia. 

Failing  the  possibility  of  providing  a  sufficiency  of  separate 
cells,  a  classification  of  prisoners  along  rigid  lines  should  be  insti- 
tuted. Young  and  old,  hardened  criminals  and  novices,  should  be 
separated  from  each  other.  There  should  be  silence  at  all  times, 
so  far  as  that  could  be  maintained. 

The  wholesale  granting  of  pardons  should  be  done  away  with.  ^ 
Prisoners  should  not  be  led  to  expect  reduction  of  sentence  through 
pardons.  Prison  officials,  especially  the  keepers  and  guards,  should 
be  more  carefully  appointed.  Much  of  the  corruption  within  the 
prison  arose  from  the  complicity  of  officials  in  the  criminals'  acts 
in  the  institution.  Furthermore,  the  cancer  of  idleness  and  sloth 
should  be  extirpated  by  hard  labor.  Prisoners  in  the  old  prisons 
were  loafing,  and  were  contriving  crimes  in  their  associated  idle- 
ness. Hard  labor  was  indispensable  in  any  reform  of  the  prison 
system. 

Nor  should  the  prison  be  regarded  as  primarily  a  financial  under- 
taking or  problem.  Less  attention  should  be  given  to  making  the 
institution  a  self-supporting  prison,  and  more  attention  to  enforcing 
a  stern  and  rigid  discipline,  for  the  ultimate  benefit  and  possible 
reformation  of  the  inmates  themselves.  While  the  diet  should  be 
suitable,  and  while  undeviating  cleanliness  should  be  observed, 
there  should  be  nothing  incident  to  the  prison  life  that  might  be 
either  pleasant  or  inviting!  "A  penitentiary  should  be  a  place 
where  everything  conspires  to  punish  the  guilty."  Extreme  but 
orderly  severity  should  characterize  the  new  prison  system. 

In  the  above  outline  was  published  for  the  first  time  a  definite 
program  for  prison  reform  by  an  organization  of  citizens  banded 


86  History  of  American  Prisons 

together  for  philanthropic  purposes.  Solitary  confinement  and 
hard  labor  were  the  two  chief  elements  of  the  proposed  system. 
Or,  in  the  absence  of  such  possibilities,  a  reversion  to  the  most 
severe  classifications  of  the  past.  One  other,  and  highly  important, 
recommendation  was  that  there  should  be  established  a  separate 
correctional  institution  for  juvenile  offenders,  and  that  they  should 
no  longer  be  sent  to  State  prison.  Within  two  years  the  House  of 
Refuge  in  New  York  city  was  established. 

Meanwhile,  at  Auburn  Prison,  there  was  being  developed  a 
system,  after  the  failure  of  the  solitary  system  without  labor,  that 
was  quite  different  from  any  then  in  practice  in  the  United  States. 
By  1823,  the  so-called  ''Auburn  system"  was  in  full  operation.  It 
provided  for  the  separate  confinement  of  each  prisoner  in  silence 
in  his  individual  cell  at  night,  and  for  the  work  of  the  prisoners 
in  association  in  silence  during  the  day.  The  old  prisons  com- 
mingled their  inmates  day  and  night  in  large  workrooms  and  night- 
rooms.  Here  at  Auburn,  there  had  arisen  now  a  system  that 
grouped  the  prisoners  during  the  day  for  maximum  industrial 
production,  and  separated  them  absolutely  at  night  for  the  maxi- 
mum prevention  of  contamination  or  of  plotting  against  the  safety 
of  the  institution,  or  for  escape. 

**Let  those  prisoners  who  are  not  in  solitary  confinement,"  said  the 
inspectors,  be  allowed  to  work,  under  a  discipline  so  rigid  as  to  prevent  all 
conversation  with   each   other,  and  be  compelled  to  perform  as  much   labor 

yas  their  health  and  constitutions  will  permit.  Under  such  a  system  of  pun- 
ishments the  State's  prison  horrors  would  be  seen,  and  its  terror  felt  in  the 
community;  and  if  it  failed  to  reform  offenders,  it  would  at  least  drive  them 
from  that  government,  whose  laws  they  had  violated,  the  certain  and  severe 
penalty  of  which  they  had  thus  been  made  to  realize." 

The  board  reported  as  early  as  1823,  however,  that  it  was  not 
in  favor  of  a  grading  system.  ''Prison  officials  should  be  relieved 
of  the  classification  of  convicts.  Sentences  of  the  courts  should 
be  more  definite  and  should  be  strictly  executed."  The  system 
of  grading  was  not  long  followed  out  at  Auburn. 

The  theory  of  the  ' '  Auburn  system ' '  was  simplicity  itself.  Main- 
tain silence  at  all  times,  and  you  remove  absolutely  from  prisoners 
the  chance  to  corrupt  each  other.  They  can  do  each  other  no 
damage  by  their  physical  proximity,  but,  if  granted  communication 
^  with  each  other,  they  become  a  force  for  evil  and  an  ever-present 
source  of  insurrection  and  riot.  If  perpetual  silence  be  maintained, 
there  is  no  reason  why  prisoners  should  not  work  in  the  shops  in 
association  during  the  day.  Prisoners  must  be  employed.  Prisoners 
are  sent  to  prison  to  do  hard  labor.  It  is  a  part  of  the  sentence. 
The  shops  are  the  logical  places  of  employment.  Any  scheme  for 
employing  prisoners  separately  in  their  own  cells  is  economically 
unsound.  Prisons  should,  so  far  as  is  compatible  with  the  proper 
treatment  of  inmates,  be  made  to  pay  expenses. 

In  short,  the  keystone  of  the  Auburn  system  was  silence!  This 
/was  the  new  element,  introduced  to  solve  the  prison  problem.  And 
J  within  a  year  it  actually  seemed  as  if  a  new  era  in  prison  admin- 
istration had  come.     Hard  work  during  the  day  had  supplanted 


History  of  American  Prisons  87 

idleness  at  Auburn.  Hard  work  was  productive,  healthy,  and 
taught  the  inmates  the  principles  of  self-support  against  the  time 
when  they  should  be  discharged  from  prison.  Hard  work  had 
reformative  value.  Was  it  not  an  edict  from  on  high  that  man 
must  earn  his  bread  by  the  sweat  of  his  brow  ?  Had  not  this  very 
United  States  been  made  possible  by  the  hard  labor  of  settlers  in  a 
frontier  land?  Was  there  any  reason  why  men  in  prison  should 
not  work  at  least  as  hard  as  the  honest,  God-fearing  supporter 
of  a  family  on  the  outside  ? 

And  the  silence  that  was  perpetually  required  of  the  convicts 
seemed  admirable.  Evil  communications  corrupt  good  manners. 
No  longer  would  there  be  heard  in  prison  yard  or  night-room  the 
foul-mouthed  recidivists  of  the  Newgate  type!  Such  men  were 
dangerous  and  wicked  criminals,  thinking  and  plotting  escapes, 
riots  and  the  contamination  of  others.  Rob  them  of  their  power  of 
communication  and  you  remove  from  them  their  deadliest  weapon ! 
Discipline  was  found  to  be  rendered  much  easier  by  silence.  Cap- 
tain Basil  Hall,  a  chaplain  of  the  British  Royal  Navy,  visiting 
Auburn  Prison  about  1829,  admired  the  unbroken  silence,  saying 
that  it  was  as  profound  as  if  the  workmen  had  been  made  of  the 
marble  which  they  were  employed  in  hewing.^^ 

The  Prison  Discipline  Society,  founded  in  Boston  in  1825,  cham- 
pioned the  Auburn  system  from  the  start.    The  following  graphic  y 
picture  was  given  in  the  first  annual  report  of  the   Society  in 
1826  of  the  daily  routine  in  Auburn  Prison :  ^^ 

**The  unremitted  industry,  the  entire  subordination,  and  subdued  feeling 
among  the  convicts,  has  probably  no  parallel  among  any  equal  number  of 
convicts.  In  their  solitary  cells,  they  spend  the  night  with  no  other  book 
than  the  Bible,  and  at  sunrise  they  proceed  in  military  order,  under  the  eye 
of  the  turnkey,  in  solid  columns,  with  the  lock  march  to  the  workshops,  thence 
in  the  same  order  at  the  hour  of  breakfast,  to  the  common  hall,  where  they 
partake  of  their  wholesome  and  frugal  meal  in  silence.  Not  even  a  whisper 
might  be  heard  through  the  whole  apartment. 

*  *  Convicts  are  seated  in  single  file,  at  narrow  tables  with  their  backs  toward 
the  center,  so  that  there  can  be  no  interchange  of  signs.  If  one  has  more  food 
than  he  wants,  he  raises  his  left  hand,  and  if  another  has  less,  he  raises  his 
right  hand,  and  the  waiter  changes  it.  When  they  have  done  eating,  at 
the  ringing  of  a  bell,  of  the  softest  sound,  they  rise  from  the  table,  form  in 
solid  columns,  and  return  under  the  eyes  of  the  turnkeys  to  the  workshops. 

"From  one  end  of  the  shops  to  the  other,  it  is  the  testimony  of  many 
witnesses  that  they  have  passed  more  than  three  hundred  convicts  without 
seeing  one  leave  his  work,  or  turn  his  head  to  gaze  at  them.  There  is  the 
most  perfect  attention  to  business  from  morning  till  night,  interrupted  only 
by  the  time,  necessary  to  dine  —  and  never  by  the  fact  that  the  whole  body 
of  prisoners  have  done  their  tasks  and  the  time  is  now  their  own,  and  they 
can  do  as  they  please. 

**At  the  close  of  the  day,  a  little  before  sunset,  the  work  is  all  laid  aside, 
at  once,  and  the  convicts  return  in  military  order,  to  the  silent  cells  where 
they  partake  of  their  frugal  meal,  which  they  are  permitted  to  take  from 
the  kitchen,  where  it  is  furnished  for  them,  as  they  returned  from  the  shop. 
After  supper,  they  can,  if  they  choose,  read  the  scriptures,  undisturbed,  and 
can  reflect  in  silence  on  the  error  of  their  lives.  They  must  not  disturb 
their  fellow  prisoners  by  even  a  whisper.     The  feelings  which  the  convicts 

"  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1828. 
i«  Same,  1826,  p.  36. 


88  History  of  American  Prisons 

exhibit  to  their  religious  teacher  are  generally  subdued  feelings.  .  .  .  The 
men  attend  to  their  business  from  the  rising  to  the  setting  of  the  sun,  and 
spend  the  night  in  solitude/' 

De  Metz  and  Blouet,  reporting  in  1837  their  study  of  American 
prisons,  said  of  the  prisoners  at  Auburn : 

'I They  march  very  close  together,  one  hand  on  the  shoulders  of  the  pre- 
ceding convict,  and  all  turning  their  head  in  the  direction  of  the  guard. 
They  mark  time  until  commanded  to  cease.'* 

A  picture  familiar  to  many  persons  still  living,  who  remember 
the  lockstep  customary,  until  relatively  recently,  in  American 
prisons. 

As  late  as  1910,  the  writer  of  this  study,  in  visiting  Auburn 
Prison,  found  many  of  the  above  methods  of  daily  routine  surviving. 
There  was  substantial,  if  not  unremitted,  industry.  There  was 
silence,  prevailing  throughout  the  institution.  The  inmates  ate  in 
a  gloomy  basement  messhall,  all  facing  in  one  direction,  as  is 
described  in  the  above  excerpt  from  the  report  of  the  Prison  Dis- 
cipline Society  of  a  hundred  years  ago.  The  stripes  had  gone,  but 
the  men  marched  in  somber  silence  to  and  from  their  work.  Silence 
prevailed  in  the  cellhouse  at  night,  and  the  very  same  structure 
that  had  housed  the  inmates  in  1826  was  still  in  active  use,  with 
the  same  wretchedly  small  cells.  At  work,  the  inmates  in  the 
shops  were  still  prohibited  from  lifting  their  eyes  and  gazing  at 
the  passing  visitor.  So  strong  was  the  power  of  survival  of  the 
methods  fastened  upon  American  prisons  by  the  sudden  and  almost 
complete  domination  of  the  Auburn  system! 

Yet,  the  principle  of  silence  has  been  from  time  to  time  challenged 
during  the  century  that  has  gone.  As  early  as  1837,  in  Miss 
Harriett  Martineau's  ''Society  in  America,"  she  expressed  her 
strong  doubt  as  to  the  reasonableness  of  the  silent  system. 

"Talking  is  an  innocent  act,  and  an  unavoidable  act.  The  prisoners 
ought  to  talk,  and  they  do.  It  is  surprising  to  me  that  any  effectual  reforma- 
tion can  be  looked  upon  from  men  who  have  the  prohibition  to  speak  set 
up  before  their  minds  as  the  chief  circumstance  and  interest  of  their  lives 
for  five,  seven,  or  ten  years.  How  the  disordered  being  is  to  be  rectified, 
how  the  prostrated  conscience  is  to  be  reinstated,  while  an  innocent  and 
necessary  act  is  thus  erected  into  an  offense,  I  leave  those  who  are  most 
versed  on  moral  proportions  to  decide." 

However,  silence  has  reigned  literally  in  prisons  and  reforma- 
tories, practically  into  the  present  day.  The  writer  of  this  study 
was  fortunate  in  being  able  to  aid  in  bringing  about  the  abandon- 
ment of  the  silent  system  in  one  of  the  New  York  prisons  less 
than  ten  years  ago.  The  absurdity  of  preserving  the  silent  system 
at  meals,  when  on  the  farm  at  Great  Meadow  Prison  the  men  talked 
freely  with  each  other,  as  well  as  in  the  recreation  hours  in  the 
prison  yard,  showed  simply  the  extent  to  which  tradition  ruled  in 
a  custom  that  no  longer  had  a  ground  for  existence.  And  it  is,  or 
was  until  recently  at  least,  to  be  chronicled  regarding  a  mid- western 
prison  that,  conceding  something  to  modern  theories,  the  inmates 
were  permitted  to  talk  on  Monday,  Wednesday  and  Friday  at  table, 
but  were  required  to  keep  silence  on  Tuesday,  Thursday  and 
Saturday,  or  vice  versa! 


History  of  American  Prisons  89 

The  great  success  of  the  Auburn  system  lay  in  the  fact  that  it 
worked !  By  1828,  so  many  distinguished  visitors  from  both  Amer- 
ica and  Europe  had  visited  the  prison  that  the  warden  then  in 
command,  Gershom  Powers,  published  a  book  of  general  informa-  y/^ 
tion  about  the  prison.^^  Powers  believed  absolutely  in  a  repressive 
institution.  The  principal  duties  of  the  convicts  were  to  obey 
orders,  and  to  labor  diligently  in  silence.  They  were  not  to  sing, 
dance,  whistle,  run,  jump,  or  do  anything  that  would  have  the 
least  tendency  to  disturb  or  alarm  the  prison.^^ 

Unquestionably  the  overwhelming  silence  of  the  place,  and  the 
unswerving  order  of  the  inmates,  were  the  two  most  profound 
impressions  made  upon  visitors.  De  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville 
wrote  that  the  silence  at  night  in  the  great  cellblock  was  that  of 
death  : 

**We  have  often  during  the  night  trod  those  monotonous  and  dumb  gal- 
leries, where  a  lamp  was  always  burning;  we  felt  as  if  we  traversed 
catacombs;  there  were  a  thousand  living  beings,  and  yet  it  was  a  desert 
solitude. ' ' " 

According  to  William  Crawford,^®  the  English  visitor  in  1832, 
Auburn  Prison  occupied  a  plot  of  ground  forming  a  square  500 
feet  in  length  either  way,  enclosed  by  a  boundary  wall  2,000  feet 
long,  30  feet  high,  and  4  feet  thick  at  the  base.  The  power  for  the 
prison  was  had  from  a  small  creek  on  the  south.  The  prison  looked  / 
to  Crawford  like  a  great  manufacturing  plant.  He  held  the  con-  v/ 
struction  of  the  prison  to  be  defective,  because  there  was  no  central 
point  where  the  prison  could  be  in  general  overseen  and  inspected. 

The  total  expense  of  construction  of  the  prison,  without  including 
the  labor  of  the  convicts,  was  above  $300,000.^^ 

The  prison  buildings  formed  three  sides  of  the  square.  The 
front  of  the  prison  was  280  feet  long,  and  each  wing  was  240  feet 
long,  and  45  feet  deep.  The  keeper's  house  was  four  stories  high 
in  the  middle  of  the  front  of  the  prison.  The  south  wing  of  the 
prison  was  built  with  passages  on  one  side  of  the  building,  and 
large  rooms  on  the  other.  Half  of  this  south  wing  was  given  over  to 
a  dining  hall,  and  chapel  made  out  of  the  old  rooms,  for  this  was  the 
original  building  at  Auburn.  In  addition,  the  south  wing  was 
rebuilt  to  allow  of  a  kitchen  and  the  female  department. 

By  1825,  the  north  wing  had  been  completed.  This  was  five 
stories  high,  and  was  42  feet  in  height.  The  passageway  between 
the  walls  of  the  prison  building  and  the  cells  was  9  feet  in  width, 
the  cells  themselves  7%  feet  long,  3.8  feet  wide,  and  7  feet  high. 
There  were  550  cells.  The  floors  were  of  oak  planks  on  brick  arches. 
The  external  walls  were  of  stone,  2%  feet  thick.  The  middle  wall, 
between  the  banks  of  cells,  was  two  feet  thick;  the  partition  walls 
between  the  cells  one  foot  thick.  In  the  walls  of  the  building  were 
large  grated  windows.    The  doors  of  the  cells  were  of  oak  planks, 

"  Powers.  Report,  p.  24. 

*8  A  General  Description  of  Auburn  Prison. 

i^B.  and  T..  p.   32. 

20  Crawford,  pp.  24flf. 

"  G.    Powers.     Report,   p.   5. 


90  History  of  American  Prisons 

bound  together  with  iron ;  the  upper  part  was  of  iron  grating.  The 
gallery  just  outside  the  cells,  above  the  ground  floor  cells,  was  three 
feet  wide. 

The  convicts  slept  in  hammocks  in  the  cells  made  of  imported 
canvas,  stretched  by  cords,  and  hung  by  the  corners  on  hooks, 
rather  loosely,  or  stretched  tightly  on  long  narrow  wooden  frames, 
which  lay  flat  at  night,  and  were  turned  up  edgewise  during  the 
day.  The  hammocks  were  discarded  within  a  few  years  from  the 
beginning  of  the  new  system  of  Auburn  Prison,  because  they 
occasioned  pain  in  the  breast  and  limbs. 

There  was  a  so-called  ventilator  in  the  cell,  with  a  pipe  21^ 
inches  in  diameter,  with  a  flue  to  the  roof.  The  ventilation  was 
defective.  The  air  pipes  allowed  conversation  between  the  cells, 
which  defeated  the  basis  of  the  Auburn  plan  of  silence.  The  heat- 
ing of  the  cells  was  said  by  Crawford  not  to  be  in  general  difficult. 
There  were  stoves  in  the  area  outside  the  tiers  of  cells. 

There  were  new  cells  in  the  south  wing  erected  in  1822,  220  in 
all  in  this  building.  This  made  a  total  of  770  cells  at  Auburn 
Prison.  In  the  new  cells  there  were  set  iron-grated  doors  from 
top  to  bottom.  By  a  curious  arrangement,  the  doors  were  set  into 
the  recess  of  the  cells  almost  two  feet.  The  workshops  were  in 
the  rear  of  the  prison.  The  entire  length  of  range  of  the  workshops 
was  nearly  2,000  feet.  The  passageway,  whereby  the  visitors  and 
guards  could  supervise  or  see  the  prisoners  at  work,  was  introduced 
in  1828,  and  was  2  feet  6  inches  wide.  The  convicts  did  not  face 
each  other  when  at  work. 

There  were  two  reservoirs  in  the  yard,  in  one  of  which  the 
prisoners  could  bathe  in  summer. 

The  usual  dress  of  the  convicts  consisted  of  vest  and  trousers, 
striped,  made  of  cotton  and  wool,  and  made  in  prison.  The  cap  was 
of  the  same  material.  The  shirt  was  of  cotton.  The  prisoners  wore 
knitted  woolen  socks,  and  leather  shoes.  The  annual  expense  of 
clothing  the  prisoners  was  $5.87.  The  contract  price  for  the  pris- 
oner's food  was  5  l-40th  cents  per  day.  There  was  fresh  beef  once 
a  week.    The  following  typical  meals  were  cited  by  Crawford: 

Breakfast:     Cold  meat,  bread,  cold  hominy,  hot  potato,  pint  of  rye  coffee, 

sweetened  with  molasses. 
Dinner:  Meat,   soup   from   broth   thickened  with   Indian   meal,   bread, 

potato. 

According  to  Powers,  the  rations  per  man  per  day  were  as 
follows :  ^^ 


10  oz.  pork  or  16  oz.  beef. 

10  oz.  wheat  flour. 

12  oz.  Indian  meal. 

%  gill  molasses. 

2  qts.  rye. 

4  qts.  vinegar. 

2%  bushels  potatoes. 

4  qts.  salt. 

1%  oz.  pepper. 


} 


Daily. 


>  Per  100  rations. 


22  Powers.    Report,  p.  43. 


History  of  American  Prisons  91 

Salt  pork  and  salt  beef  was  furnished  alternately  each  three 
days,  and  fresh  beef  once  each  week. 

In  the  morning  there  was  cold  meat,  bread,  slice  of  cold  hominy 
and  hot  potatoes.  Also  a  pint  of  hot  rye  coffee,  sweetened  with 
molasses.  For  dinner  meat,  soup  made  from  the  broth,  thickened 
with  Indian  meal,  hot  potatoes,  and  cold  water  to  drink. 

The  prison  was  governed  by  a  board  of  inspectors,  who  were 
appointed  for  two  years.  They  received  no  compensation.  They 
had  the  power  of  removing  the  warden  (called  *' Agent ")»  deputy 
keeper  and  all  subordinates.  The  salary  of  the  agent  was  $1,250, 
and  he  was  bonded  for  $25,000.  The  deputy  keeper  was  the  s/ 
*' principal  keeper"  of  to-day.  There  were  20  assistant  keepers 
and  10  guards,  including  a  sergeant.  The  prison  at  this  time 
would  have  a  population  of  770  if  full.^^ 

The  construction  of  the  prison  was  such  that  the  entire  interior 
central  yard  could  be  surveyed  at  a  glance.  Visitors  were  not 
permitted  to  pass  through  the  shops,  but  the  wall  in  the  rear  of  the 
shops  was  so  constructed  as  to  afford  space  for  a  narrow  passage- 
way, made  light  by  numerous  small  orifices,  through  which  not 
only  keepers,  but  the  many  visitors  could  survey  the  convicts  at 
work,  without  the  knowledge  of  the  latter.  Each  visitor  paid 
twenty-five  cents  as  admission  fee,  and  the  total  income  from  this 
source  in  Auburn  in  1830  was  $1,524.  The  visiting  of  prisons  by 
the  public  was  possible  to  all,  according  to  de  Beaumont  and 
de  Tocqueville.^* 

As  early  as  1822,  the  board  of  inspectors  of  Auburn  had  raised 
the  price  of  admission  for  visitors  from  12%  cents  to  25  cents,  on 
the  novel  ground  that  visitors  might  thereby  be  discouraged  from 
attending  in  such  numbers;  the  visitors  were  acquiring  the  idea, 
from  the  appearance  of  the  prison,  that  prison  life  was  not  so 
hard  and  severe  as  was  commonly  thought !  On  the  other  hand,  all 
visitors  should  not  be  excluded,  for  then  the  public  would  regard 
the  prison  as  a  Bastile  or  inquisition ! 

Said  de  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville : 

**  These  establishments  in  the  United  States  are  considered  as  belonging 
to  all.  The  prisons  are  open  to  every  one  who  chooses  to  inspect  them, 
except  in  the  Penitentiary  at  Philadelphia,  where  it  is  not  permitted  to  see  y 
the  prisoners,  because  the  visits  of  the  public  would  be  in  direct  contradiction 
to  the  principle  of  absolute  solitude,  which  forms  the  foundation  of  the 
system. ' '  ^*' 

The  Auburn  System  demanded  absolute  separation  of  the  pris- 
oner from  the  world.  No  communication  with  or  from  friends 
or  relatives  was  allowed  the  convicts  save  under  most  exceptional 
circumstances,  but  the  family  of  the  prisoner  might,  on  inquiry, 
learn  of  the  inmate 's  condition,  and  might  also,  like  other  visitors, 
walk,  along  the  passageway  behind  the  walls  of  the  shop  and  see 
the  prisoner  at  work,  though  unobserved  by  him.^^  The  news  of 
the  outside  world  was  practically  shut  off,  and  the  inmate  was 
consigned  to  a  practical  oblivion.^^ 

23  Crawford,     p.  26. 

«*  B.  and  T.,  p.  30. 

"  Gershom  Powers.    Report,  p.  17. 

2»  Same,  p.  34. 


92  History  of  American  Prisons 

Hard  labor,  under  this  new  system,  became  a  fetish.    Hard  work 

^     -was  the  rule  of  life  outside  the  prison.    If  the  prison  could  be  made 

less  costly  by  the  labor  of  the  prisoner,  hard  work  should  be  the 

Vrule  inside  the  prison.  All  of  the  prisoner's  time  was  held  to  belong 
to  the  State.^^  If  society  had  the  right  to  take  away  his  liberty,  it 
had  also  the  right  to  control  his  labor.  The  prisoners  must  work  all 
the  time  during  working  hours.  There  was  no  over-stint  —  no  task, 
after  the  regular  day 's  assignment  of  work  mis  done,  at  which  they 

/  might  earn  a  small  bonus  for  themselves.  »Such  perquisites  were 

I  deemed  highly  demoralizing  factors  in  the  old  prisons,  the  means  of 
v^     I  the  bribery  of  officers,  of  gambling,  and  of  the  purchase  of  smair 

v^luxuriesj  So  here  at  Auburn,  work  must  go  on  unremittedly,  and 
without  any  compensation  to  the  prisoner.  Those  soft-hearted 
persons  who  would  make  a  prison  anything  but  most  rigorous  were 
condemned  as  follows : 

**Led  too  far  by  their  theories,  their  sympathies   seem  to  be   all   on  the 

side   of   the   convicts;    and  the   comforts   and   conveniences   that   they   would 

place  in  the  way  of  the  criminal,  to  induce  him  to  reform,  are  so  great,  as 

.        to  render  his  situation  incomparably  more  pleasant  and  gratifying  than  that 

.cV^      of   many   honest   persons   in   the   community   who    have   never   violated   the 

^'^  laws.''^ 

In  order  effectively  to  block  any  chance  for  the  convict  to  have 
converse  even  within  the  prison  with  other  persons,  it  was  provided 
that 

*'no  assistant  keeper  shall  hold  commonplace  conversation  with  convicts,  or 
allow  them  to  speak  to  him  on  any  subject,  except  on  necessary  business. ' '  ** 

There  is  in  this  protest  of  those  who  rebelled  at  alleviating  and 
reformative  influences  in  prison  a  constantly  recurring  comment 
and  criticism  of  mild  prison  methods.     The  situation  has  always 
been  clearly  seen,  but  the  solution  has  been  difficult.    The  trouble 
has  always  arisen  from  the  fact  that  the  prison  has,  in  the  minds 
of  different  members  of  the  public,  different  functions.     If  it  is 
simply  to  punish,  then  punishments  grievous  and  even  torturing 
in  their  nature  are  admissible,  according  to  the  degree  of  punish- 
ment regarded  as  necessary  and  within  the  law.     If  the  prison  is 
primarily  a  money-earning  institution,  then  the  hard  labor  of  the 
prisoners  is  the  most  important  consideration,  and  all  else  must  be 
subordinated  to  that  achievement.    If  the  prison  is  to  reform,  then 
it  must  be  determined  what  are  the  elements  making  for  reform,  and 
they  must  be  applied  in  proper  balance.    If  to  reform  a  prisoner 
it  is  necessary  to  educate  him,  the  time  given  to  education  must  be 
.     taken  out  of  time  that  might  be  given  to  labor.     If  reform  is  to 
\    come  through  the  application  of  humane  principles  of  treatment, 
I   then  punishments  must  yield  to  other  methods,  when  possible.    It  is, 
I   in  short,  the  clash  of  the  several  prominent  "interests"  of  the 
?    prison   program  that  has   ever   and  again   confused   the   prison 
problem. 

But,  as  in  the  new  system  of  Auburn  Prison,  there  appear  at 
times  champions  of  a  reformatory  treatment  who  adhere  to  a  belief 

^  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1833. 

2«  Wharton-Shaler-King.     Report. 

28  Same,  p.  20. 


r 


History  of  American  Prisons  93 

in  most  rigorous  methods  as  the  surest  reformative  influences. 
Reformation  by  horror,  constant  hard  labor,  and  by  the  breaking 
of  the  spirit,  was  the  Auburn  method.  And  the  Boston  Prison 
Discipline  Society,  progressive  in  its  day,  held  that  prisoners  should 
defray  by  the  fruits  of  their  own  labor  in  prison  their  expenses  of 
food  and  clothing,  medical  care,  moral  and  religious  instruction,  v^ 
if  possible  the  salaries  of  the  officers  and  guards,  and  also  the 
expenses  of  their  own  conviction  and  transportation.^^ 

If,  then,  there  were  no  inducements  in  the  form  of  privileges 
at  Auburn  Prison  that  might  be  earned  by  the  prisoners  for  work 
performed,  there  must  obviously  be  some  compelling  force  to  secure 
such  an  output  of  product,  and  such  obedience  to  the  rigorous  and 
unremitting  rule  of  silence.    This  force  was  the  constantly  impend- 
ing punishment,  and  its  frequent  application.     It  was  frankly 
conceded  by  the  administration  that  the  system  could  not  be  main- 
tained without  prompt,  severe  and  effective  punishment.     Pages 
upon  pages  were  written  in  the  early  years  of  Auburn  to  justify  the 
use  of  the  ** stripes,"  as  flogging  was  called.    The  practice  of  the 
United  States  Navy  was  cited  as  proof  that  flogging  was  recognized 
and  conceded  to  be  necessary.     The  subordinate  officers  of  the  ^ 
prison,  who  had  authority  to  inflict  corporal  punishment,  were^/ 
justified  by  Powers,  the  warden,  who  said  that  they  stood  legally         / 
in  the  same  relation  to  the  convicts  as  the  master  stood  to  the 
apprentice,  or  as  the  schoolmaster  to  his  scholar.*^     Decisions  of    , 
judges  from  the  bench  upheld  the  actions  of  keepers  who  flogged.  _J 

Judge  Walworth  of  Cayuga  County,  in  which  Auburn  is  located, 
said  in  1826  in  charging  a  jury : 

**  Confinement,   with   labor   merely,   has   no   terror    for   the    guilty.     .     .     . 
It  is  through  bodily  suffering  alone  that  the  proper  effect  upon  the  prisoner 
is  produced,  and  thence  the  necessity  of  a  rigid  enforcement  of  the  prison  >/       v 
discipline  upon  every  convict  by  the  actual  infliction  of  bodily  suffering,  if 
he  will  not  otherwise  submit  to  the  rules. ' '  '^ 

Edward  Livingston,  analyzing  this  opinion  in  his  Introductory 
Report  to  the  Code  of  Reform  and  Prison  Discipline,  stated  his  ab- 
horrence of  the  illegal  and  arbitrary  use  of  the  lash  by  subordinates, 
and  pointed  out  that  so  wide  and  illogical  was  the  power  of  the 
keepers,  that  they  flogged  because  a  convict  spoke  to  his  neighbor, 
and  flogged  the  convict  if  he  denied  having  spoken  to  his  neighbor.^ 

The  board  of  inspectors  of  the  prison  held  that  inferior  officers 
should  be  invested  with  power  to  punish.  ' '  The  danger  of  abuse, ' ' 
they  maintained,  ''is  an  evil  much  less  than  the  relaxation  of*/ 
discipline  produced  by  want  of  authority."  It  is  worth  noting 
that  an  earlier  legal  obligation  of  the  inspectors  to  be  present  at 
such  punishments  was  claimed  to  be  so  frequently  inconvenient, 
and  to  cause  them  such  painful  feelings,^  that  they  asked  to  be 
absolved  from  this  duty,  which  was  granted. 

«>B.  p.  D.  S.,  1827. 

«  B.  and  T.,  p.  159. 

^  Gershom  Powers.    Report,  p.  23. 

«»P.  519. 

**  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  p.  43. 


»/, 


1 


^4  History  of  American  Prisons 

In  short,  the  door  was  thrown  wide  open  to  the  practically  indis- 
criminate use  of  corporal  punishment,  upon  the  judgment  of  the 
inferior  officer. 

Punishments  were  inflicted  with  a  rawhide  whip,  applied  to  the 
back  in  such  a  manner  as  (according  to  the  rules)  not  to  expose 
the  head,  face  or  eyes,  or  in  any  way  put  the  convict's  health  or 
limbs  in  danger.  This  being  a  ''high  and  delicate  trust,"  the 
keepers  were  admonished  to  exercise  the  prerogative  with  humanity 
and  discretion!  In  aggravated  cases,  a  cat,  made  of  six  strands 
of  small  twine,  was  applied  to  the  back  of  the  convict.  Whipping 
the  convict  for  violation  of  rules  seemed  to  Powers  to  produce 
less  personal  suffering  to  the  convict  than  any  other  punishment 
that  could  be  devised.'^^  It  was  prompt;  it  was  dreaded  by  the 
convict ;  it  was  soon  over.  The  convict  could  then  return  to  work, 
and  little  time  was  lost  in  the  shop.  The  certainty  of  immediate 
punishment  for  an  offense  committed  was  held  to  be  an  important 
point  in  its  favor. 

Powers  even  claimed  that  the  Auburn  system  of  corporal  punish- 
ment produced  an  excellent  frame  of  mind  in  the  prisoners :  ^ 

*'A  single  unarmed  keeper  who  may  be  in  the  shop  with  50  or  60  convicts 
armed  with  deadly  weapons,  the  implements  of  their  trade,  will  order  one 
of  the  most  desperate  of  them  to  come  before  him  for  some  offense  as  a 
father  would  call  upon  a  rebellious  son,  or  a  teacher  his  disorderly  scholar, 
and  punish  him  in  the  presence  of  the  other  convicts.  The  delinquent  almost 
uniformly  receives  his  punishment  submissively,  and  returns  quietly  to  his 
labor-  No  rising  or  mutiny  is  ever  occasioned,  but,  on  the  contrary,  in 
the  few  cases  where  a  delinquent  has  resisted,  and  attempted  violence  upon 
his   keeper,    the   other   convicts   have   never   failed   to    rush   instantly   to    his 

•  relief  and  protection.  .  .  .  Nearly  six  hundred  men,  possessed  of  the 
best  possible  means  of  defense  and  escape,  restrained  only  by  wooden  gates, 
which  are  constantly  opening,  are  kept  in  perfect  security  and  control  by  a 
few  unarmed  keepers  and  two  guards  armed  with  muskets. '^ 

''Obey  orders!"  was  the  rule  of  prison  life  imposed  constantly 
upon  the  convicts.  It  was  unsafe  ever  to  transgress  a  rule  in  the 
shops.^^  The  entire  system  depended  upon  instant  obedience  to 
authority.  There  was  to  be  no  argument  as  to  the  circumstances 
of  any  individual  case.     A  convict's  word  was  never  taken  even 

V  against  another  convict,  and  much  less  against  an  officer.^ 

Yet  the  "watch"  itself  was  not  wholly  trusted.  Julius  tells  of 
the  method  of  checking  up  the  night-watch: 

"There  is  in  the  wall,  which  separates  each  of  the  divisions  from  the 
other,  a  little  window,  through  which  the  watchmen,  of  whom  one  goes  on 
beat  and  one  rests,  must  pass  every  half  hour  a  leather  ball,  which  thus  in 
two  hours  has  made  the  rounds.  Only  by  an  understanding  among  all  night 
watchmen  can  this  plan  fail.'' 

It  was  inevitable  that  with  the  development  of  this  policy  of 
severe  and  frequent  corporal  punishments,  hostile  criticism  should 
soon  develop  against  the  new  methods  of  the  prison.  Between 
1825  and  1845,  two  controversial  questions  became  the  chief  prob- 
lems of  both  Auburn  and  Mount  Pleasant   (Sing  Sing)   prisons, 

85  Gershom  Powers.     Report,  p.  23. 

8«  Powers.     Letter  to  Hon.  Edward  Livingston,  pp.  22,  23. 

8^  Gershom  Powers,    p.  13. 

88  Same,  p.  25. 


History  of  American  Prisons  95 

namely,  prison  punishments  and  prison  labor.     The  first  of  these 
problems,  in  the  early  years  of  Auburn,  we  are  now  considering. 

Perhaps  we  shall  understand  much  better  the  course  of  prison 
discipline  at  Auburn  Prison  if  we  seek  to  understand  Captain 
LvndSr  who  was  twice  warden  at  Auburn,  twice  warden  at  Mount 
Pleasant  Prison  (Sing  Sing),  and  seemingly  almost  continually 
under  public  criticism  for  his  severe  methods  of  disciplining  con-  ^ 
victSj,.-  Captain  Lynds'  ideal  was  a  prison  that  functioned  with 
fiigii  industrial  efficiency.  Captain  Lynds  did  not  believe  in  the  \/ 
permanent  reformability  of  adult  convicts.^^  Silence  was  in  his 
opinion  indispensable  to  such  a  prison,  not  for  reformation,  but  to 
prevent  plots,  riots  and  escapes.  Any  violation  of  rules  must  be 
punished  at  once.  Deferred  corporal  punishment  lost  much  of  its 
force.  Couched  in  present-day  language,  his  first  order  to  his 
keepers  would  have  been:  ''Never  let  the  convict  start  anything! 
Get  him  first!" 

When  Lynds  was  for  the  second  time  warden  at  Auburn,  a 
disturbance  in  a  certain  tier  of  cells  was  reported  to  him.  He 
ordered  that  some  fifteen  to  twenty-five  convicts  be  taken  out,  and 
that  all  of  them  be  flogged.  Among  them  he  held  that  the  right 
man  would  be  found! 

Lynds  became  the  leading  authority  of  his  time  in  prison  man- 
agement, and  he  was  commonly  reputed  to  be  the  founder  of  the 
Auburn  system.  He  was  its  most  consistent  and  rigorous  exponent. 
He  resigned  several  times  from  a  prison  wardenship  because  of 
irreconcilable  differences  between  himself  and  his  suneriors.  In 
general,  he  dominated  the  inspectors.  Their  penal  philosophy, 
expressed  in  annual  reports,  was  mainly  his  own.  His  principles 
and  theories  undoubtedly  also  affected  legislative  committees, 
directed  to  investigate  prison  conditions. 

As  early  as  1824,  within  a  year  of  the  definite  establishment 
of  the  Auburn  system,  Captain  Lynds'  administration  was  already 
under  fire.  Punishments  had  been  made  very  severe  * '  because  every 
other  system  had  failed.'"*^  Although  a  school  was  maintained 
on  Sunday  for  the  younger  convicts,  it  was  given  up  shortly,  be- 
cause XiyJida  -emphasized  the  increased  danger  to  society  of  the  / 
educsLtedjionvict !  In  1824,  a  special  commission,  appointed  by  the 
Legislature  with  Samuel  M.  Hopkins  as  chairma^n,  was  directed  to 
investigate  the  Auburn  methods.  Unquestionably  the  commission 's 
report  reflected  Lynds'  dogmatic  and  tenacious  principles,  in  re- 
porting that  the  State  could  not  and  ought  not  to  undertake  at  the 
public's  expense  the  moral  reformation  of  convicts.^^  So  excellent 
was  the  Auburn  system  in  their  eyes  that  they  even  advocated  its 
adoption  in  the  disorganized  prison  in  New  York  city.  These 
commissioners  were  shortly  directed  by  the  Legislature  to  build 
a  projected  new  prison  at  Mount  Pleasant,  to  supersede  the  one  at 
Greenwich.  That  they  should  engage  Captain  Lynds  for  that  task 
was  natural.    He  was  the  ablest  man  in  sight. 

»•  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville. 

'^New  York  Assembly  Journal,  1823,  p.  29. 

*i  New  York  Assembly  Journal,  1825,  p.  108. 


96  History  of  American  Prisons 

But  Auburn  continued  to  be  under  fire  under  Captain  Gershom 
Powers  —  whose  words  relative  to  the  value  and  excellence  of 
capital  punishment  we  have  recently  quoted.  Startling  stories, 
circulated  in  the  village  of  Auburn  by  discharged  officers  and 
others,  of  brutal  beatings  at  the  prison  by  insane  male  convicts, 
and  of  the  death  of  a  female  convict  induced  by  blows,  made  a 
second  investigation  unavoidable.  Asrain  were  sent  as  an  investi- 
gating committee,  Messrs.  Hopkins,  Allen  and  Tibbits,  now  the 
builders  of  Mount  Pleasant  Prison.  Their  bias,  sincere  in  all 
probability,  was  unmistakable.  The  testimonv  of  no  convict  was 
admissible.  Should  such  evidence  be  admitted,  any  keeper  could  at 
any  time  be  put  on  trial  at  the  pleasure  of  a  convict,  with  no  loss 
/to  the  convict,  but  with  ruinous  expense  to  the  defendant.^^ 
Keepers  could  thus,  be  always  in  partial  subservience  to  convicts, 
through  fear  of  what  they  might  testify. 

The  commission's  report  supported  emphatically  the  Auburn 
system  of  punishments.  Rewards  to  prisoners  were  inadmissible, 
because  the  convict  was  condemned  to  punishment.  Personal 
punishments  alone  could  govern  desperate  convicts ;  without  prompt 
/  correction,  at  the  discretion  of  the  assistant  keepers,  the  whole 
structure  of  the  system  would  fall.^*  The  report  of  the  committee 
would  to-day  be  dubbed  a  whitewash.  Most  obvious  cases  of 
flogging  of  feebleminded  and  insane  convicts  were  justified,  con- 
doned or  explained  away.  That  a  dangerous  convict,  after  repeated 
flogging,  finally  settled  down  to  do  women's  work  was  held  to  be 
a  general  justification  of  the  system.  The  sum  total  was  that, 
according  to  the  commissioners,  in  a  little  more  than  four  years 
under  Captain  Lynds,  six  cases  of  punishment  deserved  special 
attention,  of  which  two  were  abuse,  while  under  his  successor,  a 
Mr.  Goodell,  a  mild-mannered  and  good-natured  man,  there  were 
twenty-one  conspicuous  cases  of  punishment,  of  which  twelve  were 
abuses. 

The  sudden  and  brief  appearance  of  this  Mr.  Goodell  as  warden 
of  Auburn  Prison  following  Captain  Lynds  is  more  than  usually 
interesting.  This  warden  started  out  with  deliberate  humaneness 
of  treatment.  The  commissioners,  reporting  upon  his  term  of 
office,  contemptuously  attacked  his  theories  as  *' grounded  upon  the 
good  qualities  of  convicted  felons, ' '  **  which  led  him  to  seek,  by 
kindness  and  confidence,  to  inspire  the  convicts  with  a  spirit  of 
willing  and  generous  obedience.  The  results  were  said  to  be  a 
serious  relaxation  of  discipline,  and  an  insolence  and  decrease  of 
work  on  the  part  of  the  prisoners.  No  less  than  six  vicious  attacks 
on  keepers  occurred  in  Goodell 's  administration,  and  which  in  a 
year  was  terminated  by  his  own  fatal  illness.  What  might  have 
ultimately  been  accomplished  by  Goodell  can  be  only  a  matter  of 
conjecture.  The  incident  is  of  especial  importance,  in  the  history 
of  prison  administration,  as  being  the  earliest  recorded  effort  to 
soften  the  rigors  of  the  Auburn  system  at  the  institution  itself. 

*2  New  York  Senate  Journal,  1827.  No.  50,  Appendix  A,  p.  2. 
*3  New  York  Senate  Journal,  1827.  No.  5ft»-Appendix  A,  p.  8. 
**Op.  Cit.,  p.  30.  ^-^ 


VS( 


History  of  American  Prisons  97 

Even  at  this  time,  there  was  sounded  by  Edward  Livingston,  the 
eminent  framer  of  the  Code  of  Reform  and  Penal  Discipline  for  the 
State  of  Louisiana,  a  most  cogent  and  prophetic  warning  against 
the  perpetuation  of  the  system  of  severity  of  punishments  —  a 
warning  which,  however,  was  not  heeded :  ^^ 

"A  superficial  view  of  this  subject  has  led  to  the  belief  that  the  great 
secret  of  penal  legislation  is,  to  annex  a  penalty  of  sufficient  severity  to 
every  offense;  and,  accordingly,  all  the  variety  of  pains  that  the  body  of 
man  could  suffer,  infamy  and  death,  have  figured  as  sanctions  in  the  codes 
of  all  nations;  but  although  these  have  been  in  a  train  of  experiment  for 
thousands  of  years,  under  every  variety  that  Government,  manners  and 
religion  can  give,  they  have  never  produced  the  expected  effect.  The  reason 
is  to  be  found  in  the  insurgent  spirit  with  which  man  was  endowed  by  his 
beneficent  creator  to  answer  the  best  ends  of  his  nature. 

The  same  feeling  that,  elevated,  refined  and  applied  to  the  noblest  purpose 
animates  the  patriot  to  resist  civil  tyranny,  and  the  martyr  to  defy  the  flames ; 
when  it  is  perverted,  and  made  the  incentive  to  vice  and  crime,  goads  on  the 
convict  to  arraign  the  justice  of  his  sentence,  to  rebel  against  those  who 
execute  it,  and  to  counteract  its  effects  with  an  obstinacy  in  exact  propor- 
tion to  the  severity  of  the  punishment.  .  .  .  Few  instances  can  be  found 
in  which  any  series  of  constrained  acts  have  produced  the  habit  of  continuing 
them  after  the  force  was  removed.'* 

Yet  it  is  easy  to  misjudge  and  to  overestimate  the  severity  of 
the  disciplinary  features  of  Auburn  Prison.  The  rules  were  indeed 
rigid  and  the  punishments  speedy  and  harsh;  that  the  keepers 
were  equipped  with  legal  power  sufficient  to  guarantee  their  legal 
and  political  "safety*'  in  inflicting  punishments  is  evidenced  in 
the  following  section  from  a  law  passed  in  1819,  wherein  it  is 
provided  that  if  a  prisoner  in  a  State  prison  refuse  to  comply  with 
the  rules  of  the  institution, 

**It  is  hereby  declared  to  be  the  duty  of  the  respective  keepers  under  the 
direction  of  the  inspectors  to  inflict  corporal  punishment  on  such  prisoners 
by  whipping  not  to  exceed  39  lashes  at  any  time,  or  to  confine  them  in 
solitary  cells  on  bread  and  water,  or  to  put  them  in  irons  or  stocks.     .     .     .'' 

In  1828  the  revised  statutes  gave  further  range  of  action  to  the 
officers  of  the  prison,  by  providing  that,  in  case  of  violence  on 
the  part  of  convicts,  or  attempts  to  escape, 

**  officers  of  the  prison  shall  use  all  suitable  means  to  defend  themselves,   ^ 
enforce  the  observance  of  discipline,  to  secure  the  persons  of  the  offenders 
and  to  prevent  any  such  attempt  at  escape." 

As  Klein  observes,  in  ** Prison  Methods  in  New  York  State,'' 
this  is  an  even  more  generous  blanket  license  for  the  imposition 
of  punishment  than  that  contained  in  the  law  of  1796,  for  it  was 
exceedingly  simple  for  officials  to  consider  any  movement  on  the 
part  of  the  prisoner  as  violence,  attempted  violence  or  attempted 
escape. 

Miss  Harriet  Martineau,  in  her  * '  Retrospect  of  Western  Travel, ' ' 
published  in  New  York  in  1838,  says  of  the  punishments  then 
observed  in  the  women 's  quarters  in  Auburn  Prison : 

**The  arrangements  for  the  women  were  extremely  bad.  The  gabble  of 
tongues  in  the  one  room  (in  which  the  women  prisoners  were  confined)  was 
enough  to  paralyze  any  matron.     There  was  an  engine  in  sight  which  made 

«0p.  Cit.,  p.  16.  ~ 

4 


98  History  of  American  Prisons 

me  doubt  the  evidence  of  my  own  eyes;  stocks,  of  a  terrible  construction; 
a  chair,  with  a  fastening  for  the  head  and  all  the  limbs.  Any  lunatic 
asylum  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  such  an  instrument.  The  governor  (i.  e., 
warden)  liked  it  no  better  than  we.  He  pleaded  that  it  was  only  means  of 
keeping  his  refractory  prisoners  quiet  with  only  one  room  to  put  them  in. 
.  .  .  The  first  principle  in  the  management  of  the  guilty  seems  to  me 
to  be  to  treat  them  as  men  and  women.  .  .  .  Their  humanity  is  the 
principal  thing  about  them;  their  guilt  is  a  temporary  state.  The  insane  are 
first  men,  and  secondarily  diseased  men. 

^'The  women,  all  in  the  attic  story  of  the  south  wing,  were  in  Power's 
time  under  the  supervision  of  the  steward  keeper  of  the  kitchen.  They 
were  employed  mainly  in  picking  wool,  in  knitting,  and  in  spooling,  although 
to  very  little  advantage,  as  no  means  of  coercion  could  very  well  be  adopted, 
according  to  Warden  Powers,  nor  any  restraint  be  put  upon  their  conversa- 
tion with  each  other,  because  they  were  left  alone,  except  once  a  day, 
when  the  steward  keeper  went  with  three  of  his  kitchen  convicts,  taking  the 
rations  of  the  women,  and  the  other  supplies,  and  ordered  out  the  work  that 
they  had  done.  They  were  visited  by  the  physician  when  sick,  and  some- 
times by  the  chaplain.*' 

Nevertheless  there  is  abundant  testimony,  even  from  prison 
chaplains,  that  the  well-behaved  prisoners  suffered  little  punish- 
ment."    Never  had  the  Reverend  Jared  Curtis 

**  heard  a  convict  complain  that  more  was  exacted  of  him  than  was  reasonable, 
or  that  his  rations  were  not  good,  and  in  suflacient  quantity.  ...  A 
large  portion  of  the  convicts  are  better  fed  and  clothed,  and  are  in  all  respects 
more  comfortable  than  when  they  enjoyed  their  liberty  and  were  preying 
upon  the  community.'' 

Even  the  most  tender-hearted  and  humane  philanthropists  could 
not  refrain  from  feeling  at  times  that  the  lash  was  necessary.  It 
was  an  age  in  which  the  use  of  the  rod  was  far  more  customary  than 
to-day.  ''Spare  the  rod  and  spoil  the  child"  is  an  adage  enjoying 
the  strength  of  long-time  sanction.  Even  some  twenty  years  after 
the  establishment  of  the  Auburn  system,  Dorothea  Dix  herself,  in 
1845,  sanctioned  reluctantly  the  use  of  the  "cat"  as  a  last  resort: 

"Those  who  at  present  urge  the  abandonment  of  all  modes  of  maintaining 
discipline  except  the  language  of  persuasion  must  be  either  reckless  of  con- 
sequences, or  ignorant  of  human  nature  as  manifested  by  a  considerable 
portion  of  ignorant,  long- abased  convicts.  Those  who  discover  (t.  e.,  show) 
few  traits  above  the  lowest  of  the  brute  creation  can  no  more,  at  first,  be 
influenced  to  obey  rules  and  general  order  by  mild  influence  and  words,  than 
the  tiger  or  hyena  can  be  brought  to  tameness  by  an  expressive  word  or  gentle 
regard.  ...  I  am  certain  I  could  never  subdue  my  instinctive  horror 
and  disgust  of  punishment  by  the  lash.  ...  I  could  never  order,  witness 
or  permit  its  application,  but  I  am  forced,  with  unspeakable  reluctance,  to 
concede  that  I  believe  it  may  sometimes  be  the  only  mode,  under  the  Auburn 
system,  by  which  an  insurrectionary  spirit  can  be  conquered.  It  should  not 
be  inflicted  during  the  first  moments  of  excitement  .  .  .  (and)  not  until 
reasonable  and  mild  measures  have  been  persevered  in,  and  proved  to  be 
unavailing.     .     .     ." 

y   We  have  found,  then,  as  pillars  of  the  Auburn  system,  the  factors 
vof  silence,  separation,  hard  labor  and  severe  corporal  punishments. 
What,  on  the  other  hand,  did  the  new  system  offer  of  reformative 
value  ? 

Much,  according  to  its  sponsors,  in  addition  to  the  above-men- 
tioned features,  all  of  which  were  held  to  be  reformative  in 
themselves. 


«New  York  Senate  Journal,   1827.     No.  50,  Appendix  A,  p.   8. 


History  of  American  Prisons  99 

Sunday,  at  Auburn  Prison,  was  a  day  without  work  by  the 
convicts.  After  the  usual  breakfast  in  the  messhall,  they  were 
inarched  back  to  their  cells,  where,  except  for  the  period  of  church 
service,  they  were  allowed  for  the  rest  of  the  day  to  be  on  their 
beds,  until  the  bell  rang  in  the  evening  for  undressing.'^^  Recall 
the  not  very  remote  New  England  Sunday,  vivid  memory  of  my 
own  boyhood  for  instance,  when  any  active  pleasure  on  Sunday  was 
regarded  as  quite  contrary  to  the  purposes  of  the  Lord's  Day!  y 
No  games  were  played  by  ' '  properly ' '  brought  up  youngsters,  thirty  ^ 
years  or  more  ago  in  New  England,  and  to  hear  band  music  or  to 
go  skating  on  Sunday  was  quite  outside  the  correct  observance  of 
the  day. 

Therefore,  it  is  readily  understood  that,  a  hundred  years  ago,  in 
the  Auburn  prison,  there  would  be  nothing  approaching  active 
movement  in  the  prison  population  on  Sunday.  Imagine  the  long 
Sunday,  passed  iii  cells  of  less  than  200  cubic  feet  of  space,  without 
reading  matter,  save  the  one  Book  always  present,  which,  however 
good,  would  at  times  pall.  No  visitor,  no  friend,  no  chance  to  have 
intercourse  with  even  a  fellow-inmate,  no  hope  of  any  change  on 
the  morrow,  or  next  week,  or  next  month,  except  for  those  soon  to 
go  out  of  the  prison.  No  exercise,  no  chance  to  bathe  in  the  sun, 
or  breathe  the  fine  country  air.  No  slightest  chance  to  gratify  the 
instincts  of  sociability,  of  play,  of  ambition,  of  anything !  Sunday  / 
differed  from  any  other  day  only  in  being  a  day  of  no  work,  and  a 
day  when  for  those  who  elected  to  do  so,  church  might  be  attended, 
within  the  prison,  of  course. 

Such  convicts,  choosing  church,  remained  in  their  seats  in  the 
messhall  at  the  close  of  breakfast,  and  were  taken  by  two  keepers  / 
into  the  chapel,  where  they  were  taught  by  some  twenty  young 
men  from  the  local  theological  seminary  in  the  village,  who  volun- 
teered their  services.^ 

The  resident  chaplain  had  general  supervision  over  the  Sunday 
school.  Any  conversation  whatsoever  between  the  young  citizen- 
teachers  and  the  convicts  on  any  subject  other  than  the  lessons  was 
rigorously  forbidden.  The  Sunday  school  privilege  was  eagerly 
embraced  by  about  a  fourth  of  the  prison  population.  It  was 
absolutely  the  only  alleviation  of  the  entire  week!  One  prisoner 
pleaded  for  any  form  of  punishment  other  than  that  of  being 
deprived  of  his  Sunday  school.'^'^  To  De  Metz  and  Blouet,  the 
prisoners  stated  at  Auburn  that  Sunday  was  the  hardest  of  the 
week  to  endure,  because  of  passing  the  day  in  a  narrow  cell.^  In 
addition  to  Bible  study,  and  religious  instruction,  convicts  were 
taught  reading,  writing  and  arithmetic.  As  early  as  1822,  it  was 
seen  that  the  Auburn  prison  population  was  highly  illiterate.  More 
than  three-fourths  of  the  population  could  barely  read  and  write, 
and  not  one  in  ten  possessed  any  high  degree  of  intelligence.^^ 

*'  Powers.     Report,  p.  34. 
*«  Powers,  p.  34. 
"De  Metz  and  Blouet,  p.  13. 
"B.  P.  D.   S..  1827.  p.  93. 
Bi  Report  of  Inspectors,  1822. 


100  History  of  American  Prisons 

M  The  chaplain  was  regarded  as  the  only  officer  of  the  prison  whose 
*^  work  was  clearly  reformative.  The  "agent  and  keeper"  (the  two 
titles  of  the  executive  officer  of  the  prison)  was  the  business  man- 
ager of  the  institution.  Reformation  was  not  his  duty.  Frequently 
he  doubted  if  it  could  be  achieved.  The  principal  keeper  was  the 
general  disciplinarian  and  was  also  the  captain  of  the  prison  staff 
of  keepers  and  guards.  These  officials  were  not  concerned  with  the 
saving  of  the  prisoners'  souls,  but  with  the  security  of  their  bodies, 
and  the  protection  of  the  citizens  from  their  depredations.  They 
had  the  routine  tasks  of  keeping  order,  preventing  escapes,  main- 
taining industry  and  punishing  for  violations  of  rules.  The  physi- 
cian's  task  did  not  extend  beyond  the  intermittent  and  relatively 
cursory  care  of  the  sick.  Ajid_joJhe--Xihaplain^3^toler^  rather 
than  activEly-  favored  by jthe_administration  —  must  be  the  pris- 
oners '  guide  back  to  rectitude  and  honesty. 

f  Hence  the  insistence  by  Warden  Powers,  who  for  his  time  was 
clearly  an  enlightened  warden,  that  there  should  be  a  resident 
chaplain,  giving  his  whole  time  to  his  work.  This  was,  of  course, 
a  considerable  innovation.  This  service  of  the  chaplain.  Reverend 
Jared  Curtis,  was  at  first  partially  contributed  by  the  Boston  Prison 
Discipline  Society,  which  from  1825  on  furnished  and  paid  his 
salary.  It  was  not  surprising  that  a  philanthropic  society  of 
another  State  should  maintain  a  chaplain  at  Auburn.  That  prison, 
for  a  time,  was  the  only  typical  prison  exemplifying  the  new  system. 
The  Boston  Society  started  out  by  being  not  local  or  even  State- 
wide in  its  interests,  but  national,  and  it  early  made  through  its 
representative,  Louis  Dwight,  frequent  and  valuable  visits  to  many 
American  institutions,  the  results  of  which  appeared  year  after 
year  in  the  annual  reports  of  the  Prison  Discipline  Society,  and 
furnish  to  us  to-day  the  most  cogent  and  most  accessible  source  of 
our  information  of  this  period. 

Warden  Powers  felt,  in  1828,  that  the  State  itself  ought  to 
appoint  such  an  officer  as  the  chaplain.  The  duties  of  the  chaplain 
should  be  to  have  the  special  supervision  of  the  religious  instruction 
of  the  convicts,  visiting  and  conversing  with  them  in  their  cells, 
imploring  a  blessing  at  their  tables  before  they  sat  down  to  eat, 
and  praying  with  them  after  they  went  to  their  cells  at  night,  and 
before  they  lay  down  to  sleep. ^^  Everything  that  the  chaplain  did, 
however,  must  conform  to  the  rules  of  the  prison. 

To-day  the  progressive  and  socially-minded  chaplain  is,  in  a 
modern  State  prison  or  reformatory,  one  of  the  most  influential 
and  most  necessary  officers.  There  are  a  thousand  and  one  intimate 
needs  of  the  prisoners.  The  Sunday  service  is  but  a  small,  though 
important,  part  of  the  chaplain's  weekly  work.  He  it  is  who  in 
particular  furnishes  the  link  between  the  inmate  and  his  family 
outside.  He  advises  with  the  prisoners,  often  teaches,  often  prays 
with  them,  not  infrequently  becomes  the  intimate  sharer  of  the 
inmate's  secrets.  The  chaplain  is  at  the  bedside  of  the  sick,  and  is 
the  solace,  so  far  as  there  can  be  solace,  of  the  man  about  to  pay  the 

^2  Gershom  Powers,  p.  54. 


History  of  Ameripan  PttisaNs  ,  ,,  101 

extreme  penalty,  and  he  walks  with  him  to  the  chair  or  to  the 
gallows.  The  chaplain's  work  is  never  done  —  and  his  strength 
among  the  inmate  population  depends  almost  entirely  upon  his  own 
personality  and  his  own  conception  of  his  high  duty  and  privilege. 

In  an  outline  by  the  warden  of  Mount  Pleasant  Prison,  Robert 
Wiltse,  in  1834,  the  following  duties  and  obligations  of  the  chaplain 
were  outlined,  which  applied  in  all  probability  to  Auburn  Prison 
also,  and  represented  the  attitude  of  the  time  toward  the  activity 
of  the  chaplain  within  the  prison :  ^ 

The  chaplain  was  to  conform  strictly  to  all  the  rules  of  the  \  / 
prison.    He  was  to  furnish  the  convicts  with  no  intelligence  save    I  ' 
what  his  profession  required  him  to  give.    He  was  to  give  no  hope     \ 
or  promise  of  pardon,  or  of  attempting  to  procure  a  pardon.  ^ 

He  was  to  have  free  access  to  the  convicts  save  when  they  were 
in  the  shops  at  labor.    He  was  to  make  the  convict  feel  the  necessity     . 
of  amendment,  and  of  strict  obedience.     Ho^wa^to^  convince,  if  J 
posgibIfi^4he  convict  of  the  justice  of  his  sentence, 
"^furmng'back  to  the  period  of  the  wardenship  of  Gershom  Powers, 
we  find  how  absolutely  divorced  from  the  task  of  individual  counsel 
and  co-operation  with  the  inmate  was  the  position  of  warden  at 
that  time.     Powers,   by  his  own  statement,  regarded  his  duties 
toward  the  inmate  of  such  distant  nature  that  not  until  the  dis- 
charge of  the  convict  from  the  prison  did  he  invite  him  into  his 
office  and  there,  /or  ilae  first  time,  ''enter  into  a  free  and  friendly 
conversation   with   him,"   endeavoring   ''by   desultory   course   of 
inquiry"  to  arrive  at  a  knowledge  of  his  former  history;  how  he 
was  "bred  up;"   what   means  of   literary,   moral   and   religious 
instruction  he  had  enjoyed,  etc.     The  prisoner  was  also  asked  in 
detail  as  to  the  effects  of  his  confinement ;  in  what  respect  he  had 
endured  the  most  suffering,  how  he  had  been  treated,  and  in  what 
business  he  was  now  to  engage.    After  the  convict  had  stated  that 
of  all  the  impulses  and  of  the  temptations  of  prison,  the  craving 
to  talk  with  his  fellow-man  was  the  greatest,  and  that  he  often  did    y 
not  know  the  names  of  his  fellow  convicts  who  had  worked  for  ^ 
months  at  his  side,  the  convict  was  given  the  customary  three 
dollars  allowed  by  law,  and  he  was  dismissed  —  of  course,  with 
admonition  and  advice !  ^ 

Powers  believed  that  it  was  wise  to  postpone  this  interview  until 
the  last  moment  of  the  convict's  prison  term,  because 

**  during  the  period  of  their  confinement,  the  convicts  have  so  many  motives 
for  concealment,  that  the  same  reliance  could  not  be  placed  on  the  statements 
they  might  make. ' '  " 

Wardens  of  the  present  day,  reading  of  this  early  method  of 
Gershom  Powers,  and  thinking  on  their  own  present  methods  of 
dealing  with  their  individual  inmates,  will,  many  of  them,  ponder 
at  the  wide  difference  between  the  present  and  the  past.  For  it  is 
by  far  the  most  common  custom  of  wardens  to  hold  frequent  inter- 
views with  the  inmates,  and  in  particular  to  grant  to  inmates  the 
privilege  of  an  interview  upon  a  request  placed  in  the  designated 

'^  Powers.     Report,  p.  50. 
"  Powers,  p.  49. 


102  iliSTOiiY.OF  American  Prisons 

box  in  the  prison  yard  or  building,  and  accessible  to  all  prisoners. 
Indeed,  I  have  seen  in  prison  after  prison  during  the  last  ten 
years,  a  really  striking  knowledge  and  intimate  interest  on  the 
part  of  wardens  as  to  their  inmates'  desires  and  affairs.  The  many 
big-hearted  wardens  who  in  recent  years  have  often  made  bold 
experiments  with  the  honor  system  have  recognized  that  one  of 
their  chief  functions  in  their  prisons  has  been  to  know  their  inmates 
not  simply  officially  but  personally,  and  with  sympathy  and  interest 
in  their  affairs.  They  have  recognized  the  high  value  of  such  a 
relationship  in  inducing  reformation  and  a  sense  of  responsibility. 

Have  we  not,  even  already  in  this  study,  seen  emerge  from  the 
gray  background  of  these  prisons  that  pass  before  our  eyes  the 
figures  of  outstanding  personalities?  Have  we  not  been,  perhaps 
unconsciously,  seeking  to  understand  the  prison  by  interpreting 
the  man  who  was  the  warden,  or  who  built  the  institution,  or  whose 
penal  philosophy  led  to  some  result  which  we  have  noted.  Have 
w^e  not  already  seen  pass  before  us  the  spirit  of  William  Penn,  of 
William  Bradford,  of  Caleb  Lownes,  of  Thomas  Eddy?  And,  in 
the  times  of  great  demoralization,  and  of  failure,  have  we  not 
marked  the  absence  of  any  outstanding  personality?  Where  were 
the  men  to  combat  the  debacle  in  the  Massachusetts  State  Prison, 
or  at  Newgate  in  Connecticut? 

But  with  the  rise  of  the  new  system  at  Auburn,  we  find  looming 
up  successively,  as  contributors  to  an  organization  that  was  for  its 
time  the  most  successful  in  the  country,  the  figures  of  Captain 
Brittin,  of  Elam  Lynds,  and  of  Gershom  Powers.  We  shall  see 
the  dominance  of  Lynds  at  Mount  Pleasant  Prison  mark  that 
institution  with  specific  characteristics.  Throughout  this  study 
we  shall  in  realitv  be  noting  the  close  correlation  of  the  dominant 
personality  with  the  note-worthy  product,  in  some  form,  within  the 
\prison. 

Indeed,  I  have  recently  written,  apropos  of  the  spirit  manifested 
in  a  modern  prison: 

**No  warden  in  any  prison  can  conceal  the  'spirit  of  the  prison'  from 
the  trained  observer.  A  warden  can  attempt  to  camouflage  his  institution 
by  expatiating  upon  the  high  polish  of  the  floors,  the  excellent  cleanliness  of 
the  nooks  and  crannies,  the  fine  light  bread,  the  precision  of  administration  — 
and  those  are  necessary  parts  of  a  prison  regime,  but  not  the  soul  of  it. 
The  warden  can  seek  by  hale  and  hearty  joviality,  or  by  an  assumption  of 
learning,  or  confidential  communications,  or  apparent  solicitude  for  his 
'boys'  or  for  'penology'  and  the  like,  to  conceal  other  conditions  of  dubious 
nature. 

"But  he  cannot  camouflage  the  way  the  inmates  react  to  him,  look  at  him, 
get  ready  for  him  as  he  approaches  —  and  these  things  are  tell-tale 
barometers  of  an  institution.  This  Eaiford  project  (i.  e.,  the  State  Prison 
Farm  of  Florida,  which  the  writer  had  just  visited,  and  which  had  inspired 
the  article)  could  hardly  last  over  night,  with  the  present  very  few  paid 
employes  if  something  beside  the  law  did  not  hold  it  together.  Even  the 
powerhouse,  the  electric  plant,  the  mechanical  heart  of  the  institution  is 
run  wholly  by  inmates.  At  any  instant,  of  an  evening,  the  lights  could  all 
be  cut  off,  the  power  shut  down.  The  few  cars  or  teams  could  be 
commandeered  without  too  much  difficulty.  So  something  must  hold  Eaiford 
together,  for  throughout  the  institution,  during  the  day,  there  are  no  guns. 
The  gangs  working  under  inmate  overseers  are  not  dominated  by  shotguns 
or  rifles. 


History  of  American  PilisONs  103 

"The  something  that  makes  Eaiford  go  is  probably  a  combination  of  good  \ 

spirit,  the  sense  of  a  square  deal,  a  traditional  submission  to  authority,  and  [ 

a  fear  of  the  extremely  heavy  penalties  for  attempted  escape.     .     .     .     The  | 

spirit  of  an  institution  is  the  finest  asset  —  or  the  greatest  liability  —  that  S 

can  be  presented  to  the  State  by  the  institution.     Industry,  product,  build-  / 

ings,    discipline,    are,    of    course,    essentials.     But    the    intangible    thing,    the  I 

spirit   of   the   place,   the  thing  that  underlies   the   daily  life   of   the   place,  L 

underlies  honor  systems,  attempts  at  self-government  and  the  like  —  that  is  \ 

the  conditioning  factor  in  reclamation  and  rehabilitation,   the   cement   that  I 

holds  the  hghly  dynamic  mass  from  flying  off  centrifugally,  when  guns  and  / 
guards  are  lacking,  and  the  portals  yawn  with  temptations  to  escape." 

So,  in  this  earlier  era,  we  begin  to  think  of  prisons  as  Captain 
Lynds*  prison  (Sing  Sing),  or  Gershom  Powers'  prison  (Auburn),    y 
or  a  little  later  Samuel  Wood's  prison   (Eastern  Penitentiary  ol"^ 
Pennsylvania),  and  Amos  Pilsbury's  prison  (the  Connecticut  State 
Prison  at  Wethersfield). 

Hopkins  wrote :  ^^ 

''Many  at  Auburn  prison  are  often  moved  to  tears  under  the  preaching  of 
an  eloquent  and  able  minister  there.  ...  I  have  also  heard  them  sob- 
bing in  great  numbers,  at  a  few  words  spoken  to  them  in  public  by  Mr. 
Powers,  in  which  he  alluded  to  the  situation  and  feelings  of  their  friends. 
.  .  .  We  must  avoid  extremes  in  judging  of  them.  They  are  not  the 
innocent  victims  of  unjust  laws;  but  neither  are  they  all  demons.  They 
are  men,  though  greatly  fallen." 

For,  despite  the  apparently  paradoxical  attitude  of  mind  toward 
the  establishment  of  friendly  relations  with  the  prisoners  during 
the  terms  of  the  incarceration,  Powers  appeared  to  be  sincerely 
interested  in  at  least  establishing  the  fact  that  Auburn  Prison  was 
a  reformative  institution.  He  tried  hard  to  learn,  by  letters  sent 
out  to  postmasters,  district  attorneys  and  others,  something  about 
the  subsequent  career  of  convicts  discharged  from  his  prison.  In 
his  edition  of  1828,  he  stated  that  of  160  prisoners  released,  112  were 
described  by  correspondence  as  being  subsequent  to  their  prison 
careers  decidedly  steady  and  industrious,  and  of  relatively  good 
character;  12  as  somewhat  reformed;  2  as  not  much  improved;  4 
of  whom  nothing  was  known ;  2  as  deranged,  and  20  as  decidedly 
bad.^  At  this  time,  29  prisoners  at  Auburn  had  been  previously 
confined  therein.    Powers  deduced  therefrom  that  his  statistics 

**  warranted  the  increased  exertions  of  the  legislators  and  of  all  who  feel  an 
interest  in  the  moral  improvement  and  reformation  of  this  degraded  and 
unhappy  class  of  our  fellow  beings. ' ' " 

This  is  an  early  effort  to  prove  results  statistically,  and  cannot 
be  accepted  as  conclusive.  There  is  no  indication  that  the  entire 
prison  population  that  had  been  discharged  had  been  studied. 
Furthermore,  it  has  been  found,  even  in  these  modern  days,  that 
the  information  gathered  through  correspondence  is  frequently 
inaccurate  or  too  general  to  be  wholly  trustworthy.  In  the  early 
days  of  Auburn  Prison,  when  postal  service  was  primitive  and 
dilatory,  it  could  hardly  be  expected  that  such  information  would 
be  full  or  to  the  point.    Moreover,  the  statistics  as  gathered  show 

"^De  Mptz   and    Blouet,   p.    346. 
"  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1828. 
"  Powers,  p.  71. 


104 


ffisTok-^'OF  'American  Prisons 


that  some  sixty-five  to  seventy  per  cent,  of  the  released  inmates, 
as  included  in  the  total  number  studied,  were  **  behaving  them- 
selves." But  these  former  inmates  had  been  but  a  short  time  out 
of  prison.  The  test  of  reformation  is  not  by  any  means  the  first 
six  months,  or  the  first  year  out  of  prison,  but  a  period  of  at  least 
several  years.  The  chief  fallacy  still  existing  in  the  majority  of 
the  reports  of  institutions  maintaining  parole  lies  in  the  assumption 
that  any  released  inmate  who  passes  successfully  through  the 
period  of  parole  —  six  months  or  a  year,  or  even  more  —  is 
'*  reformed. "  Few  correctional  institutions,  even  to-day,  in  the 
United  States  have  statistics  showing  the  subsequent  record  of 
released  inmates  extending  beyond  the  conclusion  of  the  period  of 
parole. 

We  turn  now,  briefly,  to  the  industrial  phases  of  the  earliest 
history  of  Auburn  Prison.  It  was  in  the  years  from  1828  on,  that 
Warden  Powers  and  his  successors  could  record  the  financial  success 
yof  the  prison  as  an  industrial  plant.  The  Boston  Prison  Discipline 
Society  held  in  its  first  annual  report  that  prisoners  should  prac- 
tically defray  the  expenses  of  maintenance  of  the  prison.  By  1828, 
the  earnings  of  Auburn  for  the  fiscal  year  had  come  to  within 
$1,000  of  the  total  disbursements,  which  were  $35,504.  Warden 
Powers  maintained  that 

**the  most  sanguine  economist  never  dreamed  of  making  public  prisoners 
pay  for  their  support,  and  also  for  prisons  to  confine  them." 

But  he  added  in  the  same  year  that  he  believed  no  further 
appropriation  would  ever  be  necessary  for  the  support  of  the 
convicts  in  the  prison,  unless  in  case  of  some  unforeseen  calamity.^ 

The  distribution  of  labor  and  the  earnings  at  Auburn  Prison  in 
the  year  ending  October  31,  1827,  were  as  follows : 


No.  of  Convicts 


Average  Daily 
Earnings  per  man 


Total  Earnings 
for  month 


Cooper  Shop 

Tool  Shop 

Shoemaker's  Shop 

Tailor's  Shop 

Weaver's  Shop .  .  . 
Blacksmith's  Shop 
Turner's  Shop. . .  . 


106 
25 
69 
57 

104 
34 
16 


$0.27 
.37 


$770 
246 
551 


123 


In  addition,  there  were  working  on  October  31,  1828,  90  others, 
besides  14  females,  at  building,  and  as  cooks,  washers,  woodsawers, 
scrubbers,  waiters,  etc. 
J  At  the  time  of  Power's  wardenship,  the  complicated  problems  of 
the  competition  of  prison  labor  with  free  labor  had  already  arisen, 
as  well  as  the  equally  perplexing  problem  of  contract  labor  —  the 
letting  of  the  labor  of  the  prisoners  to  private  firms  or  individuals. 
The  prison,  through  its  products,  was  influencing  the  ''open 
market,"  and  was  arousing  the  ire  of  the  ''free  mechanics,"  as  the 
laboring  man  and  the  artisan  of  the  day  were  called.    Within  a  few 

•«  B.  p.  D.  S.,  1828,  p.  164.     Gershom  Powers.     Report,  p.  48, 


History  of  American  Prisons  105 

years  after  the  establishment  of  Auburn  Prison  upon  a  basis  that 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  administration  was  industrially 
"sound,"  Auburn  Prison  was  to  become  the  storm  center  of  a 
violent  agitation  against  prison-made  products  and  the  contracting 
of  the  labor  of  prisoners. 

Discussion  of  this  very  important  development  must  be  deferred 
to  Chapter  twelve.  We  can,  however,  make  a  rapid  survey  of  the 
prison  labor  laws  of  the  State  of  New  York  up  to  the  period  we 
now  leave,  for  discussion  of  other  prisons  and  States. 

The  law  of  1796,  applying  then,  of  course,  to  the  newly  planned 
State  prison  that  was  built  in  Greenwich,  provided  that 

**it  shall  and  may  be  lawful  for  the  inspectors  of  each  of  the  said  prisons 
either  by  themselves  or  by  an  agent  or  agents  to  be  by  them  from  time  to  . 

time  appointed,   to  purchase  such     .     .     .     tools,  implements,   raw   or   other  ^y^ 
materials   on  which  to   employ  the   convicts     .     .     .     and   shall   cause   to   be 
kept  regular  accounts  of  all  the  articles  so  to  be  purchased  and  of  the  avails 
arising  from  the  sales  of  any  articles  manufactured  by  the  convicts  in  such 
prisons     .     .     .     and  to  carry  the  residue  to  the  credit  of  the  State. 

We  have  seen  in  Chapter  6  the  early  undertakings  of  the  prison 
at  Greenwich.  The  first  labor  opposition  appeared  about  1801,  and 
came  from  boot  and  shoemakers,  resulting  in  an  amendment  to  the 
law,  and  requiring  that  boots  and  shoes  made  by  convicts  should 
be  branded  with  the  words  ' '  State  Prison. ' '  Some  three  years  later, 
a  further  law  prohibited  the  employment  of  more  than  one-eighth 
of  the  convicts  in  the  State  Prison  in  the  making  of  boots  and 
shoes,  excluding  from  this  number  those  who  had  learned  their 
trade  before  commitment. 

In  1819,  the  prison  authorities  were  empowered  by  law  to 
employ  convicts 

"upon  any  of  the  public  avenues,  roads,  streets  or  other  works  in  the  city 
of  New  York,  and  also  on  other  public  works  in  the  counties  of  Eichmond 
and  Kings  (now  Staten  Island  and  Brooklyn). 

A  further  law  authorized,  in  1820,  ' '  the  purchase  of  marble 
quarries  to  be  operated  by  convict  labor  from  the  New  York 
Prison."  In  1817  a  law  had  been  passed  permitting  the  employ- 
ment of  prisoners  on  canals  to  be  constructed  under  the  canal 
commissioners  of  the  State. 

In  1817,  there  had  been  a  radical  effort  made,  through  law,  to 
do  away  with  the  manufacturing  by  the  State  of  prison-made 
products  on  its  own  account.    In  that  year,  a  law  prohibited 

"the  purchase  of  any  materials  to  be  wrought  or  worked  up  for  sale  by  the 
convicts  confined  in  the  State  Prison  on  account  of  the  State  after  October 
31,  1817." 

The  law  furthermore  directed  that  convicts  were  to  be 

** solely  employed  in  manufacturing  and  making  up  such  material  as  may. 
be  brought  to  the  State  Prison  by  or  for  individuals  or  convicts  to  whom  such 
materials  may  belong,  to  be  manufactured  at  fixed  prices  for  labor  bestowed 
upon  them,  to  be  paid  by  the  owners  of  the  goods  to  the  agent  of  the  said 
prison  for  the  use  of  the  State." 

This  is  an  early  form  of  the  system  known  as  *' piece-price, '  * 
whereby  the  State  acts  as  the  manufacturer  of  the  goods,  but  does 


106  History  of  Amekicai^  Prisons 

not  undertake  to  market  them,  or  to  procure  the  raw  materials  in 
the  first  place.  This  plan  did  not  work  successfully,  and  in  the 
/following  year,  1818,  the  prison  was  by  law  permitted  to  continue 
J  the  earlier  system  of  manufacturing  on  its  own  account  and  selling 
its  products  in  the  open  market,  a  system  known  later  as  the  '  *  State- 
account"  system. 

In  1821,  contract  labor  was  authorized  by  law,  whereby  the  labor 
of  prisoners  might  be  leased  to  outside  firms  or  ''contractors"  at 
a  daily  rate  per  capita,  specified  in  the  contract.  Such  work  in 
she  majority  of  cases  in  our  American  prisons  has  been  done  within 
'the  prison  walls,  and  where  the  actual  physical  presence  of  prisoners 
has  been  contracted  for,  as  in  the  turpentine  groves  of  Florida  or 
on  railroad  construction,  the  method  of  contracting  has  been  known 
as  the  ' '  lease  system. ' ' 

The  commission  that  was  appointed  in  1824  to  examine  into  the 
subjects  of  prison  and  prison  management  reported  that 

**the  largest  source  of  income  is  from  the  labor  of  convicts  done  for  account 
of  individuals,  and  on  raw  materials  and  articles  brought  into,  and  worked 
up  in  the  prison  workshops  and  charged  to  the  employers  or  contractors  by 
the  piece." 

Prison  labor,  presumably  with  emphasis  on  the  piece-price  system, 
had  thus  far  been  profitable  at  Auburn  Prison.  But  under  the 
statutes  of  1828,  the  year  of  Gershom  Power's  revised  account  of 
Auburn  Prison,  contract  labor  was  introduced  as  a  permanent 
policy  of  the  State  prisons  of  New  York.  The  law  of  1828  provided 
that 

**  whenever  the  inspectors  of  either  prison  shall  so  direct,  it  shall  be  the  duty 
of  the  agent  of  such  prison  to  make  contracts  from  time  to  time  for  the 
labor  of  convicts  confined  therein,  or  of  any  of  the  said  convicts  with  such 
persons  and  upon  such  terms  as  may  be  deemed  by  the  said  agent  most 
beneficial  to  the  State  ...  it  shall  be  the  duty  of  the  agents  to  use 
their  best  efforts  to  defray  all  the  expenses  of  the  said  prisons  by  the  labor 
of  their  prisoners.*' 

We  turn  now,  at  this  period  of  the  more  stable  utilization  of 
contract  labor  in  the  prisons  of  New  York,  to  a  study  of  the  early 
years  of  the  most  noted  prison  upon  the  American  continent,  the 
State  prison  erected  from  1825  on  in  the  village  of  Sing  Sing  on 
the  banks  of  the  Hudson. 


CHAPTER  X 


THE  EARLY  YEARS  OF  MOUNT  PLEASANT  PRISON   (SING  SING) 

On  an  April  evening  in  1920,  the  writer  of  this  study,  accom- 
panied by  a  song-leader  who  had  done  service  in  the  army  during 
the  war,  and  an  accompanist  who  had  played  and  sung,  up  and 
down  the  trenches  in  France,  went  up  to  Sing  Sing  Prison  from 
New  York  to  aid  in  conducting  the  first  *  *  community  sing ' '  in  that 
century-old  institution.  The  song-leader,  after  his  remarkable 
experience  of  that  evening,  was  dubbed  the  **man  who  put  the 
'sing'  in  Sing  Sing." 

To  the  writer,  sitting  in  the  extreme  rear  of  the  great  room  that 
serves  as  auditorium  and  chapel,  watching  in  the  semi-darkness  (as 
the  slides  were  thrown  on  the  screen  with  the  words  of  the  popular 
songs),  and  seeing  over  a  thousand  men  sitting  there,  singing 
lustily,  resonantly,  with  fine  volume  and  with  surprising  accuracy 
of  tone  and  appreciation,  the  mental  pictures  of  the  origin  in  1825 
of  this  Bastile  on  the  Hudson  recurred  with  almost  poignant  vivid- 
ness. Here  in  A.  D.  1920,  were  convicts,  assembled  together  without 
guards,  singing  the  same  songs  that  the  men  of  the  army  had 
sung  in  France,  in  going  into  battle,  and  in  the  training  camps  of 
this  country.  Here  was  an  essentially  normal  process  —  singing 
in  common  —  and  here  were  a  thousand  men  on  honor,  conducting 
themselves  without  the  presence  of  prison  officials,  enjoying  the 
unusual  treat  of  singing  human  songs  in  a  human,  co-operative 
way!  Murderers,  burglars,  robbers,  embezzlers  —  all  sorts  and 
kinds  of  criminals  —  sang  of  home,  and  of  mother,  and  of  the  simple 
virtues,  sang  of  love,  and  hope,  and  joy,  of  country  and  of  God! 

The  meeting  was  being  conducted  by  the  Mutual  Welfare  League, 
a  self-governing  organization  of  the  prisoners  that  was  founded  in 
1914  by  Thomas  Mott  Osborne,  when  he  became  warden  of  Sing 
Sing  Prison.  The  man  who  introduced  the  song  leader  and  the 
accompanist  that  evening  was  a  convicted  murderer.  The  inmate 
guards  were  of  all  degrees  of  crime.  During  the  day  and  the 
evening,  the  officials  of  the  Mutual  Welfare  League  controlled, 
within  such  limits  as  the  warden  designated,  the  social  side  of  the 
inmates'  prison  life. 

Yes,  through  the  span  of  a  century,  fundamental  changes  have 
come  over  the  prisons  of  the  country!  Sing  Sing,  as  we  said  at 
the  beginning  of  this  study,  is  shortly  to  become  the  most  note- 
worthy example  in  the  world  of  the  receiving  and  distributing 
prison.  But  when,  in  1824,  the  Legislative  commission,  consisting^ 
of  Stephen  Allen,  Samuel  M.  Hopkins  and  George  Tibbits,  were 
appointed  to  visit  both  Auburn  and  Greenwich  Prisons,  their  sole 
purpose  was  to  report  on  their  relative  merits,  and  to  plan  for  some 
institution  that  would  solve  the  notorious  problems  of  the  old  prison 
in  Greenwich. 

[107] 


108  History  of  American  Prisons 

This  commission,  reporting  in  1825,  adhered  with  conviction  to 
the  merits  of  the  new  system  at  Auburn.  They  had  been  pro- 
foundly impressed  with  the  talents,  integrity  and  system  of 
discipline  inaugurated  there  by  Elam  Lynds,  the  Auburn  warden.^ 
Undoubtedly,  the  commingling  and  the  idleness  at  the  Greenwich 
prison  accentuated  by  contrast  the  impressiveness  of  Warden 
Lynds'  new  methods.  The  commission  gave  also  special  study  to 
the  economic  responsibilities  of  a  prison.  Prisoners  should  not 
only  not  be  idle,  but  they  should  meet  so  far  as  possible  the  cost 
of  maintaining  the  prison.  According  to  the  commissioners,^  the 
kind  of  work  fitted  for  a  State  prison  should  embody  the  following 
properties : 

It  should  be  of  a  kind  for  which  there  is  a  great  demand. 

The  material  should  be  cheap. 

The  trade  should  be  one  that  is  easily  learned. 

It  should  be  a  business  that  cannot  be  so  conducted  by  machinery  as  to 
reduce  the  wages  too  greatly. 

The  trade  should  be  one  at  which  hard  labor  can  be  enforced,  and  also  be 
made  profitable. 

The  commissioners  advised  the  abandonment  of  the  State  prison 
at  Greenwich,  because  it  was  of  unfit  construction,  and  incapable 
of  maintaining  profitable  industries.  Casting  their  business  gaze 
toward  other  States,  they  saw  both  the  State  prisons  of  New  Hamp- 
shire and  Massachusetts  carrying  on  a  profitable  industry  in  stone- 
cutting.  Where  could  a  quarry  or  quarries  be  secured  near  New 
York?  Either  at  Marble  Hill,  near  New  York  (just  beyond  the 
extreme  north  end  of  the  island  of  Manhattan)  or  in  the  village  of 
Sing  Sing.  Why  should  stone  cutting  be  the  determining  industrial 
factor  in  the  establishment  and  location  of  the  new  prison  ? 

Because :  ® 

The  raw  material  would  require  only  the  labor  of  convicts  in  its 
preparation. 

The  demand  for  the  article  as  a  building  material  was  bound  to  increase. 

A  prison  located  on  the  Hudson  Eiver,  near  New  York,  would  make  the 
expense  of  transportation  by  water  to  the  place  of  demand  slight.  There 
would  also  be  demand  for  the  stone  from  outside  the  State. 

The  quarries  under  consideration  by  the  commission  would  not  come  in 
competition  with  others,  since  they  were  the  nearest  ones  to  New  York  city. 

Such  quarries  would  furnish  hard  and  constant  labor  to  the  convicts  — 
thus  meeting  the  requirements  of  their  sentences. 

In  this  business,  the  manual  labor  would  not  be  likely  to  be  displaced  later 
by  machinery. 

Furthermore,  the  prisoners  could  build  their  own  prison  from  the  materials 
at  hand;  the  stone  prison  thus  constructed  would  be  both  fireproof  and 
impregnable.     Repairs  on  a  stone  prison  would  be  much  less  costly. 

These  arguments  impressed  the  Legislature,  as  did  also  the  esti- 
mate of  a  probable  cost  of  only  $62,671  for  building  a  prison  of  800 
individual  cells  —  this  sum  to  include  maintenance  of  100  working 
convicts  the  first  year  of  construction,  and  of  200  such  convicts  in 
the  next  two  years.     The  old  prison  in  New  York  might  be  sold 

1  Report  of  Select  Comm.  of  New  York  Senate,  1831,  p.  2. 

2  Assembly  Journal,  1825,  P-  112. 

3  Op.  Cit.  (Assembly  Journal),  p.  132. 


History  of  American  Prisons  109 

for  $50,000,  and  if  the  $40,000  of  repairs  necessary  to  the  old 
prison  were  added  thereto,  the  State  would  gain  financially  by  the 
erection  of  a  new  prison  elsewhere. 

The  commissioners  carried  the  day,  and  were  also  appointed  a 
commission  to  locate  and  build  the  prison  that  was  to  become  the 
best  known  —  at  times  the  most  notorious  —  in  the  world.  An 
option  was  secured  at  Mount  Pleasant,  in  the  town  of  Sing  Sing, 
of  a  tract  of  130  acres,  called  the  Silver  Mine  Farm,  and  belonging 
to  John  Fleetwood  Marsh.  On  this  land,  rising  steeply  from  the 
Hudson  to  a  height  of  some  170  feet,  and  33  miles  from  New  York, 
a  silver  mine  had  been  extensively  worked  before  and  up  to  the 
War  of  the  Revolution.*  It  was  reported  that  silver  ore  in  consider- 
able quantities  had  been  taken  out.  More  recently,  several  tons  of 
copper  ore  had  been  extracted. 

The  State  appropriated  $70,000  in  March,  1825,  with  which  to 
build  the  new  prison.  Mr.  Marsh's  farm  and  a  small  adjacent 
parcel  were  bought  for  $20,100.  Captain  Lynds  was  engaged  to 
build  the  new  prison  —  on  his  guarantee  that  he  could  successfully 
meet  the  wholly  new  problem  of  constructing  a  great  prison  by  the 
labor  of  desperate  convicts,  lodged  not  in  a  walled  prison,  but 
literally  in  the  fields. 

The  undertaking  was  daring,  but  Lynds  was  filled  with  confi- 
dence. He  picked  his  hundred  convicts  from  Auburn  Prison, 
instead  of  from  the  near-by  prison  in  New  York,  because  the 
Auburn  prisoners  were  more  familiar  not  only  with  cutting  and 
laying  stone,  but  also  with  his  swift  and  heavy  hand. 

In  the  spring  of  1825,  the  convicts  were  taken  from  Auburn 
Prison  to  the  canal,  seven  miles  away,  whence  they  were  brought  in 
two  canal  boats  to  the  Hudson  River,  and  thence  in  freight  steamers 
to  Sing  Sing,  where  they  arrived  on  May  14th.  Each  man  made 
the  journey  with  shackles  on  one  leg.  On  the  same  day  they  erected 
a  temporary  barracks,^  and  soon  afterwards  a  cookhouse,  and  a 
blacksmith's  and  carpenter's  shop.  They  proceeded  at  once  to 
the  leveling  of  the  broken  and  precipitous  side  hill  for  a  prison 
site.  From  the  outset  this  task  proved  slower  and  more  arduous 
than  had  been  anticipated.  The  convicts  were  guarded  by  officers 
with  guns,  and  from  the  first  a  rigid  discipline  of  obedience  and 
silence  was  enforced. 

We  must  make  no  mistake  about  the  methods  pursued  in  main- 
taining this  system  of  out-door  employment  of  convicts  at  Mount 
Pleasant  Prison.  This  was  no  forerunner  of  a  system  of  outdoor 
convict  labor  on  an  honor  basis.  Riots  and  escapes  were  prevented 
only  by  absolute  obedience  to  the  commands  of  labor  and  silence. 
Guards  had  full  authority  to  inflict  ''stripes"  without  even  report- 
ing such  floggings  to  their  superior  officers. 

"Why  are  these  nine  hundred  malefactors  less  strong  than  the  thirty 
individuals  who  command  them?  Because  the  keepers  communicate  freely 
with  each  other,  act  in  concert,  and  have  all  the  power  of  association;  whilst 
the  convicts,   separated  from  each  other  by  silence,  have,  in  spite  of  their 

*  Senate  Journal,  1829,  p.  304. 
»  Senate  Document  92,  1834,  p.  7. 


110  History  of  American  Prisons 

numerieal  force,  all  the  weakness  of  isolation.  Suppose  for  an  instant,  the 
prisoners  obtain  the  least  facility  of  communication;  the  order  is  immediately 
^the  reverse;  the  union  of  their  intellects,  effected  by  their  spoken  word,  has 
taught  them  their  strength;  and  the  first  infraction  of  the  law  of  silence 
destroys  the  whole  discipline. ' '  • 

Clearly,  then,  the  sanction  for  silence,  as  an  integral  part  of  the 
Auburn  system,  rested  on  the  necessity  of  preventing  disorder,  riots 
and  escapes,  as  well  as  on  the  importance  of  preserving  the  individ- 
ual prisoner  from  the  contaminating  influence  of  his  associates. 
The  warden  of  the  period  was  probably  far  less  worried  about  the 
possibilities  of  still  further  demoralizing  his  inmate  population 
by  mutual  opportunities  for  conversation  than  he  was  about  the 
chances  of  the  development  of  plots  through  mutual  communication. 
The  same  principle  of  perpetual  silence,  therefore,  which  appealed 
to  the  philanthropist  for  its  preventive  and  reformative  value,  was 
pleasing  to  the  prison  official  as  a  disciplinary  and  precautionary 
measure. 

By  the  coming  of  cold  weather,  60  cells  had  been  built  of  the 
800  proposed.  The  prison  was  to  be  a  single  building,  476  feet 
long,  44  feet  wide,  and  four  tiers  high.  The  plan  of  the  cellblock 
was  to  be  almost  identical  with  that  of  Auburn.  The  cells  were 
placed  back  to  back.  Their  dimensions  were  depth  7  feet,  width  3 
feet  3  inches,  height  6  feet  7  inches.  These  cells  are  used  to-day, 
nearly  a  century  after  they  were  built,  and  are  intolerably  small, 
often  very  damp,  and  altogether  unfit  for  human  habitation.  They 
will  be  abandoned  with  the  completion  of  the  new  receiving  and 
classification  prison. 

Two  reasons  conditioned  the  location  of  the  prison  at  the  water's 
edge.  First,  the  importance  of  having  the  workshops  at  tidewater, 
in  order  to  facilitate  the  delivery  of  the  stone  with  the  minimum 
of  cartage.  Secondly,  for  reasons  of  health,^  by  which  was  meant 
probably  the  importance  of  securing  easy  drainage  facilities.  This 
latter  reason  is  the  more  surprising  because  in  later  days,  one  of 
the  chief  criticisms  of  Sing  Sing  Prison  was  its  dampness  and 
consequent  unhealthiness.  When  William  Crawford,  the  English 
visitor,  went  through  the  prison  in  1832  he  found  the  prison  cells 
deficient  in  ventilation,  they  had  a  close  and  offensive  smell, 
probably  owing  to  the  low  situation  in  which  the  building  stands, 
and  which  prevents  as  good  a  circulation  of  air  as  might  be  obtained 
on  a  higher  spot.  The  floor  is  damp  in  wet  weather. "  *  In  1845, 
for  instance,  only  twenty  years  after  the  beginning  of  the  construc- 
tion of  the  prison,  Dorothea  Dix  wrote  that  the  location  of  the 
prison  rendered  the  cells  damp,  and  even  the  fires  in  the  stoves  in 
the  corridors  failed  to  correct  this  condition. 

Within  six  months  of  commencing  work  on  the  prison,  in  1825, 
the  convicts  were  already  being  housed  two  in  a  cell.  The  cam- 
paign, nearly  a  century  later,  for  the  permanent  abolition  of  Sing 
Sing,  was  based  largely  upon  the  pernicious  ** doubling  up"  of 
prisoners  in  these  viciously  small  cells,  in  a  great,  damp  bastile-like 

•B.  &  T.,  p.  26. 

T  New  York  Senate  Journal,  1827,  p.  62. 

8  Crawford,  p.  29. 


History  of  American  Prisons  111 

structure.  Here,  at  the  very  outset  of  this  prison's  history,  the 
same  practice  was  begun,  with  the  inevitable  excuse  of  ''lack  of 
room."  Obviously,  it  broke  down  temporarily  the  Auburn  system 
of  separation  and  silence,  the  cardinal  principles  of  the  new  method, 
just  as  in  our  own  time  the  doubling  up  of  prisoners,  two  in  a 
cell,  has  broken  down  morality,  health,  and  lessened  the  possibility 
of  reformation. 

We  find  reference,  at  this  time,  to  what  and  how  much  the 
convicts  in  1825  ate,  and  how  they  were  fed.  A  certain  Ebenezer 
Wilson  secured  the  contract  for  feeding  the  prisons,  at  8i/4  cents 
a  day  per  capita,  on  the  following  dietary  —  the  meat  being  salt, 
not  fresh: 

1  lb.  prime  beef,  or  %  lb.  prime  pork. 
12  oz.  rye  flour. 

6  oz.  Indian  meal. 
%  gill  molasses. 

And  for  every  hundred  rations: 

3  bushels  potatoes. 

4  qts.  rye  for  rye  coffee. 

2  qts.  vinegar. 
2  oz.  pepper. 

During  the  first  year,  so  alert  Were  the  guards  that  there  was 
but  one  escape,  and  this  convict  was  retaken.  There  were  three 
deaths,  and  **some  sickness."    A  hospital  was  lacking. 

A  year  later,  $63,503  of  the  original  appropriation  of  $70,000 
had  been  expended,  but  only  170  feet  of  the  cellhouse  had  been 
erected.  Work  was  delayed  by  the  great  amount  of  excavating  and 
leveling.  The  maximum  of  200  convicts,  that  had  been  planned 
for  the  second  year  could  not  be  employed  for  lack  of  quarters. 
The  simple  expedient  of  housing  convicts  under  such  circum- 
stances in  temporary  shacks  was  evidently  not  deemed  longer 
feasible,  although  it  had  been  done  the  year  before.  Convicts  trans- 
ferred from  the  State  prison  at  Greenwich  had  proved  poor  workers, 
and  also  refractory.  Lynds  always  maintained  that  the  prisoner 
must  go  through  a  process  that  we  would  to-day  call  **  breaking, ' ' 
before  he  became  a  useful  and  docile  convict.  These  men  from  the 
old  State  prison  did  not  fall  into  the  Lynds'  system  of  discipline. 
On  December  1st,  there  were  169  convicts  at  the  prison,  of  whom 
158  were  quarrying,  cutting  stone  or  excavating. 

An  incident  of  1826  throws  a  side  light  on  the  curious  sense  of 
what  was  felt  to  be  a  privilege  granted  by  the  then  commissioners. 
The  Legislature  raised  the  question  why  the  iron  grated  doors  in 
the  Mount  Pleasant  Prison  should  be  hung  flush  with  the  corridor, 
instead  of  nearly  two  feet  back,  at  the  inner  end  of  the  recess  of 
the  cell  door  as  at  Auburn.  The  commissioners  solemnly  assured 
the  Legislature  that  they  had  done  this  partly  in  order  that  the 
prisoner,  when  pacing  up  and  down  within  his  cell,  might  extend 
his  walk  from  2i/2  to  3  steps! 

Another  year,  1827,  saw  428  cells  completed,  and  372  cells  yet  to 
be  built.    The  commissioners  were  delighted  with  the  site.    *  *  A  more 


112  History  of  American  Prisons 

healthy  situation  could  not  have  been  selected. "»  The  Reverend 
Gerrish  Barrett  was  appointed  chaplain,  his  salary  of  $200  being 
paid  partly  by  the  commissioners  and  partly  by  the  Boston  Prison 
Discipline  Society.  An  interesting  light  upon  the  methods  of  this 
early  prison  chaplain  is  thrown  by  the  report  of  the  Prison  Dis- 
cipline Society  of  1829,  showing  the  manner  in  which  Gerrish 
Barrett  taught  a  certain  illiterate  convict  at  Sing  Sing.  The 
statement  was  made  in  schedule  form : 

February  22d,    1829.  Began  the  first  verse  of  Genesis  and  learned  4  letters. 

February  23d.  Learned  5  letters  more. 

February  24th.  Could  say  all  the  letters  in  the  first  line. 

February  25th.  Knew  all  the  letters  in  the  first  verse. 

February  26th.  Knew  all  the  letters  in  2  verses. 

February  27th.  Spelled   all  the  words  of  one  syllable  in  the  first 

verse. 

February  28th.  Partially     learned     the     words:      " created ''     and 

"heaven." 

March  1st.  Besides   learning    "created"   and    "heaven"   more 

perfectly,  spelled  the  word  *  *  beginning ' '  correctly. 

March  2d.  Bead  the  first  verse  in  the  Bible  for  the  first  time. 

March  3d.  Bead  the  first  line  of  the  second  verse. 

March  4th.  Bead  all  the  second  verse. 

March  5th.  Bead  correctly  the  third  verse. 

March  6th.  The  fourth  verse. 

March  8th.  Five  verses.* 

March  10th.  Six  verses. 

March  18th.  Bead  with  ease  to  the  sixteenth  verse. 

March  19th.  To  the  twentieth  verse. 

March  22d.  To  the  twenty-third  verse. 

March  29th.  Bead  correctly  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis. 

Tabulating  his  activity  as  chaplain,  he  stated  that  during  a  period 
of  18  weeks,  770  chapters  containing  19,328  verses  had  been  recited 
by  the  convicts.  Forty-two  entire  books  had  been  committed  to 
memory;  one  man  in  17  weeks  committed  49  chapters,  or  1605 
verses,  another  1,296  verses. 

There  were  235  convicts  at  work  on  December  31st,  1827.  In 
April,  1828,  the  Legislature  authorized  the  removal  of  all  the  con- 
victs from  the  New  York  State  Prison,  and  ordered  that,  since  there 
were  no  quarters  for  female  convicts  at  Mount  Pleasant,  the  com- 
missioners should  contract  for  their  custody  by  the  city  of  New 
York. 

The  State  was  becoming  solicitous  as  to  the  proper  care  of  its 
female  prisoners.  Governor  DeWitt  Clinton  in  1828  recommended 
that  there  be  established  somewhere  in  the  State  a  separate  peni- 
tentiary for  women  prisoners.  Although  in  the  prisons  at  Auburn 
and  New  York  there  were  not  over  50  women,  their  condition  was 
deplorable.  They  were  not  separated  from  each  other,  they  had 
little  work  to  do,  and  were  mainly  if  not  wholly  in  charge  of  male 
officers.  One  woman  in  Auburn  Prison  had  become  pregnant  while 
in  prison,  and  had  also  been  severely  flogged.  The  Mount  Pleasant 
prison  commissioners  were  instructed  in  1828  to  present  plans  to  the 
Legislature  for  a  woman's  prison. 

By  May,  1828,  all  the  male  prisoners  had  been  moved  to  the  new 
prison,  which  was  already  becoming  popularly  known  as  Sing  Sing, 

»  Senate  Journal,  1828,  p.  44. 


History  of  American  Prisons  113 

from  the  name  of  the  village.  The  city  of  New  York  bought  in  this 
year  the  abandoned  prison  in  Greenwich  for  $100,000  —  apparently 
a  good  bargain  for  the  State.  By  October,  the  main  building  at 
Mount  Pleasant  was  finished. 

The  prison  was  482  feet  long,  44  feet  wide,  and  32  feet  high. 
In  this  same  year,  the  warden  started  to  build  an  ''appurtenant 
building ' '  to  the  south,  at  right  angles,  and  toward  the  river,  to  be 
81  feet  long,  40  feet  wide,  and  two  stories  high,  for  kitchen  and 
hospital.  Later,  a  second  similar  building  was  added,  containing 
a  chapel  seating  900.  The  prison  was  taking  on  the  proportions  of 
a  hollow  square,  with  a  proposed  prison  yard  480  feet  long  by  300 
wide.  The  yard  was  made  entirely  of  fiUed-in  land  —  which  became 
a  most  serious  cause  of  the  later  dampness  at  Sing  Sing. 

At  the  end  of  1828  there  were  at  Mount  Pleasant  Prison  513 
convicts.  In  1828  the  commissioners  began  to  make  contracts 
to  cut  stone  for  public  corporations.  Contracts  were  entered  into 
with  the  city  of  New  York  for  stone-cutting  and  blacksmith  work 
for  the  local  penitentiary;  for  stone  for  the  court  house  in  Troy; 
cut  stone  for  the  State  House  in  New  Haven;  cut  stone  for  the 
City  Hall  in  Albany ;  coping  stone  for  Fort  Adams  in  Rhode  Island ; 
and  for  an  iron  steamboiler  to  be  sent  to  ''Mexico  in  South 
America. ' ' 

Workshops  were  planned  for  the  north  side  of  the  prison  yard, 
to  take  the  place  of  an  otherwise  necessary  wall,  and  on  the  west 
side  there  was  constructed  during  this  year  and  1830  a  wharf 
approximately  600  feet  long  by  30  feet  in  width.  The  prison  was 
thus  practically  completed,  and  the  Legislature  had  appointed  the 
commissioners  a  board  of  inspectors  for  the  year  1830  when  sud- 
denly serious  charges  of  cruelty  and  maladministration  were 
brought  against  Captain  Lynds  by  Samuel  M.  Hopkins,  one  of  the 
commissioners. 

The  situation  that  arose  was  sensational.  Captain  Lynds  was  at 
the  height  of  his  prison  career.  He  had  achieved  what  had  seemed 
impossible,  in  building  the  greatest  and  newest  prison  in  the  United 
States  without  an  enclosing  wall,  and  wholly  by  the  labor  of  des- 
perate convicts.  He  was  popularly  held  to  be  the  founder  of  the  y 
Auburn  system.  He  was  undoubtedly  its  most  rigid  and  uncom-'^ 
promising  adherent.  His  prisons  at  Auburn  and  Sing  Sing  had 
been  ruled  with  an  iron  hand.  He  had  succeeded,  conspicuously, 
as  a  prison  administrator.  And  now  he  was  publicly  charged, 
before  the  Legislature,  by  Mr.  Hopkins  with,  among  other  things : 

Ordering  prisoners  not  to  complain,  under  pain  of  punishment,  of  want  of 
food. 

Keeping  prisoners  on  short  rations. 

Tolerating  maladministration  of  office  by  an  assistant  keeper  who  received 
presents  from  the  food  contractor. 

Charging  for  extra  rations  without  warrant. 

Bad  faith  and  evasiveness. 

Accepting  lower  grade  beef  than  was  contracted  for. 

Cruelty  and  bad  temper. 

Doubtful   pecuniary  transactions. 

Unwarranted  discharge  of  a  faithful  employe. 

Unwarranted  breach  of  good  relations  with  the  chaplain. 


y 


114  History  of  American  Prisons 

Without  doubt,  Mr.  Hopkins  believed  his  charges  to  be  tenable. 
He  claimed  to  have  been  deceived  in  Lynds,  and  he  recognized  that 
in  now  making  frank  confession  of  his  error,  he  was  exposing 
himself  to  severe  and  mortifying  remarks  from  the  enemies  of  the 
rigid  system  he  had  championed.  Hopkins'  declaration  of  his 
position  in  1830  deserves  extended  quotation,  for  it  foreshadows 
the  inevitable  ultimate  breakdown  of  the  Auburn  system  in  its 
original  rigor: 

''That  system  of  prison  government  which  originated  chiefly  in  this  State, 
and  which  is  known  as  the  Auburn  System,  begins  to  prevail  extensively  in 
the  United  States,  and  attracts  great  attention  in  all  civilized  countries. 
This  system  consists  chiefly  in  a  discipline  which  is  very  strict  and  summary. 
To  produce  such  strictness  there  must  be  absolute  command. 

'*To  insure  to  the  principal  keeper  the  means  of  safety  and  strictly  gov- 
erning such  dangerous  subjects,  he  must,  it  is  thought,  have  the  appointment 
of  his  assistants.  We  have,  therefore,  in  the  midst  of  a  free  country,  a 
despot  executing  his  commands  through  ofl&cers  entirely  dependent  upon  his 
will.  It  is,  then,  a  despotism,  in  comparison  with  which  the  government  of 
a  camp,  or  a  ship  of  war,  is  mild  and  free. 

"The  life  and  limbs  of  the  convicts;  their  treatment  in  sickness;  their 
starvation  or  other  sufferings;  their  moral  treatment  and  hopes  of  amend- 
ment, all  depend  upon  the  will  of  the  absolute  dictator.  We  who  are  com- 
missioners, have  strenuously  advocated  this  system,  as  unavoidably  necessary. 
It  has  been  supported  against  a  vast  array  of  opinion,  and  against  the  author- 
ity of  great  names,  both  in  this  and  other  countries;  and  the  Legislature  has. 
in  milder  terms,  adopted  it. 

**But  we  never  advocated  such  a  despotism  except  in  connection  with  a  most 
effectual  plan  of  inspection  and  control;  with  moral  discipline  also;  with 
religious  teaching,  by  a  devoted  and  attentive  chaplain;  and  the  whole  plan 
implies,  and  so  our  reports  state,  that  the  principal  should  be  a  man  of 
humanity,  morality  and  integrity.  All  this  is  attainable.  Without  it  I  have 
never  supposed  that  the  system  can  be,  or  ought  to  be,  endured  in  a  free 
country,  or  in  any  country.     .     .     . 

"The  eyes  of  mankind  are  on  us.  Other  nations  are  waiting  with  anxiety 
to  see  the  issues  of  this  experiment.*' 

Here  is  the  first  outspoken  and  illuminating  rebellion  against  the 
already  famous  Auburn  system.  It  is  the  revelation  of  the  '  *  inside '  * 
by  one  on  the  inside,  not  a  diatribe  against  a  system  by  one  who  is 
on  the  outside,  a  disgruntled  prison  official,  a  newspaper  corre- 
spondent, or  a  legislator  stirring  up  a  sensation.  Yet  a  ** select'* 
committee  of  the  Senate,  after  conducting  an  extended  investigation 
in  1830,  exonerated  Captain  Lynds  and  his  subordinate.  They 
found  the  several  charges  either  ungrounded,  or  due  to  miscon- 
struction on  the  part  of  Hopkins.  They  condoned  the  system  of 
legalized  cruelty  and  not  infrequent  torture  that  were  a  keystone 
of  the  Auburn  system. 

With  the  findings  in  detail  of  the  select  committee  we  can  be 
little  concerned.  We  need  not  regard  their  action  as  a  deliberate 
whitewash.  They  may  well  have  been  in  earnest.  But  there  stand 
out  from  this  investigation  several  points  of  permanent  truth.  The 
government  of  the  prison  was  despotic,  and  had  to  be  so  under  the 
Auburn  system.  There  was  only  one  way  to  success  under  that 
system,  and  that  was  by  the  complete  acquiescence  of  the  inmate 
in  the  rigors  of  the  system.    Lynds  achieved  his  results  through  the 


History  of  American  Prisons  115 

iron  hand.^^  He  did  not  believe  it  to  be  even  the  free  citizen 's  duty 
to  go  beyond  law  and  order.  He  was  not  a  man  of  vision, 
but  of  dogged  action.  Successful  despots  need  imagination,  and 
so  Lynds  kept  getting  into  trouble,  in  pursuit  of  his  methods. 

Commissioner  Hopkins  had  had  many  years  of  experience  to 
draw  on  in  arriving  at  his  conclusions.  He  had  himself  conducted 
two  investigations  at  Auburn  Prison.  He  had  himself  condoned 
the  Auburn  system  in  official  reports  —  and  he  had  learned  much 
since,  especially  the  way  in  which  novices  in  investigating  prison 
conditions  and  prison  administration  can  be  misled. 

However,  the  salient  fact  of  Hopkins'  statement  was  that  the 
warden,  if  a  despot,  could  control  to  an  amazing  extent  the  testi- 
mony of  his  subordinates  in  any  public  investigation.  Subordinate 
officers,  on  the  witness  stand,  become  surprisingly  like  the  three 
Chinese  monkeys,  who  hear  not,  see  not,  and  speak  not.  Their 
jobs  and  their  salaries  depended  upon  holding  their  place  in  the  y 
warden 's  estimation,  and  in  the  early  days,  before  the  advent  of  the 
civil  service,  the  subordinate  officer,  if  hired  by  the  warden,  was 
naturally  his  creature,  unless  he  was  of  most  independent  tempera- 
ment. Moreover,  the  position  of  guard  and  keeper  was  one  paying 
little,  and  narratives  of  prison  life  in  the  nineteenth  century  are 
filled  with  assertions  of  the  illiteracy  and  ignorance  and  stupidity, 
not  to  say  cruelty,  of  the  under  officers  of  many  a  prison. 

If  we  seek  further  reasons  for  the  failure  of  most  investigations, 
we  find  that  the  testimony  of  the  convict  himself  is  discredited,  so 
that  the  bulk  of  testimony  before  a  committee  is  one-sided.  In 
many  instances,  moreover,  the  single-mindedness  of  the  investi- 
gating committee  can  be  questioned.  There  is  the  natural  desire  to 
suppress,  if  possible,  the  development  of  a  public  scandal  in  a 
State  institution.  Politics  plays  an  important  part  in  the  applica- 
tion of  the  ''soft-pedal."  When  glaring  offenses  of  administration 
are  evident,  political  pressure  is  only  too  frequent  to  **go  easy" 
with  the  offender,  on  the  ground  that  ''he  thought  he  was  doing 
his  duty."  And  so  forth. 

We  have  cited  instances  still  only  too  familiar  in  the  effort  of 
commissions  and  organizations,  at  times,  to  arrive  at  the  truth 
regarding  the  conduct  of  penal  and  correctional  institutions.  And 
if  this  condition  is  not  rare  to-day,  what  must  it  have  been  in  the 
early  years  of  American  prisons,  when  there  was  as  yet  no  organized 
public  opinion  in  the  form  of  societies  or  groups,  demanding  that 
the  truth  be  known !  The  Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society,  strong 
in  its  activities  from  its  organization  in  1825,  was  an  ardent 
champion  of  the  Auburn  system,  and  had  committed  itself  so 
thoroughly  to  the  methods  employed  that  it  became  strikingly  one- 
sided, through  the  years,  in  its  persistent  adherence  to  the  system. 
What  chance  had  Hopkins,  with  no  similar  organization  in  New 
York  —  where  the  Prison  Association  of  New  York  was  not  founded 
until  1844  —  to  make  headway  against  a  prison  administration  that 
did  produce  results,  in  dominating  the  inmates,  in  reducing  mate- 

^"  Lynds  complained  to  Dr.  Julius  that  he  could  not  get  keepers  of  sufficient 
ruthlessness.     S.  Z.,  p.  201. 


116  History  of  American  Prisons 

rially  the  prison  expenses,  and  in  giving  the  public  a  respite  from 
the  tales  of  horror  and  demoralization  that  emanated  from  the  old 
prison  in  New  York  city  ? 

And  so,  with  the  exoneration  of  Captain  Lynds ;  with  the  passing 
of  Hopkins  and  his  fellow  building  commissioners;  with  the  com- 
pletion of  the  cellhouse  and  the  wharf;  with  the  creation  of  a 
prison  yard;  with  the  appointment  of  three  new  inspectors;  and 
with  the  reappointment  of  Captain  Lynds  as  warden,  the  first 
period  of  Mount  Pleasant  Prison's  history  is  at  an  end. 

Yet,  before  we  leave  this  initial  stage  of  the  history  of  Mount 
Pleasant,  we  can  record,  as  stimulated  by  the  study  of  the  earliest 
years  of  Mount  Pleasant  Prison,  some  noteworthy  and  radical 
suggestions  of  Captain  Basil  Hall,  of  the  Royal  Navy,  who  traveled 
in  the  United  States  during  1827  and  1828.^^  He  visited  Mount 
Pleasant  Prison,  and  was  a  graphic  observer.  He  pictured  the 
fearful  monotony  of  the  daily  life  of  the  convict.  ''The  convicts 
who  are  sentenced  to  confinement  in  the  State  prisons  of  America 
are  chiefly  such  as  in  England  would  be  executed  or  banished. ' ' 

From  Captain  Hall  has  come  the  earliest  suggestion  we  have 
traced  of  the  plan  of  reduction  of  sentence  served  in  prison  —  an 
actual  proposal  to  establish  a  commutation  system  of  the  kind  that 
later  became  customary,  although  not  within  the  period  covered 
by  this  study.  Captain  Hall's  proposal  therefore  had  all  the 
virtues  of  a  radical  and  highly  constructive  plan  —  and  like  other 
similarly  advanced  plans,  found  no  hearing  from  the  ** practical" 
prison  administrators  of  the  day. 

''Why,  if  disobedience  be  punished,  should  not  obedience  be  rewarded? 
And  how  easy  it  would  be  to  give  the  convicts  a  direct  and  immediate  interest 
in  conforming  to  the  rules  of  the  place!  Suppose  a  prisoner  were  sentenced 
to  several  years'  confinement;  then,  if  he  behave  well  for  a  week  together,  let 
one  day  be  struck  off  his  term  of  confinment;  if  he  continue  to  deport  himself 
correctly  for  a  month,  let  his  term  of  detention  be  shortened  a  fortnight;  and 
if  he  shall  go  steadily  on  for  six  months,  then  let  half  a  year  be  struck  off 
his  whole  period;  and  so  on,  according  to  any  ratio  that  may  be  found 
suitable. 

*'.  .  .  It  must  surely  be  the  wish  of  society  in  general  to  let  a  prisoner 
out  as  soon  as  possible,  consistently  with  a  certain  salutary  effect  on  himself 
and  on  others.  It  has  always  seemed  to  me,  that  by  the  process  of  giving  the 
convict  a  constant,  personal  interest  in  behaving  well  during  his  confinement, 
not  only  might  the  seeds  of  virtue  be  sown,  but  the  ground  put  in  good  order 
for  their  future  growth.  ...  If  the  plan  I  suggest  were  adopted,  the 
evils  of  uncertainty  (of  sentence)  which  are  great  would  fall  entirely  to  the 
prisoner's  share,  not  to  that  of  the  public,  from  being  made  contingent  upon 
their  own  conduct.  ...  Of  course,  the  pardoning  power  would,  need  to 
be  tied  up  more  strictly  than  it  is,  and  imperatively  limited  by  law. ' ' 

To-day,  in  the  prisons  of  the  United  States,  will  be  found  printed 
commutation  tables,  resembling  logarithmic  charts,  indicating  for 
the  assistance  of  the  clerks  of  the  prisons  the  exact  ''time  off"  from 
the  sentences  that  the  inmates  may  earn  through  good  conduct  and 
other  activities.  The  dream  of  Captain  Hall  has  come  true,  long 
since,  and  to-day  even  the  commutation  tables  are  disappearing 
gradually  in  favor  of  the  exercise  of  the  indeterminate  sentence. 

^  Basil  Hall.     "  Travels  in  North  America  in  the  Years  1827-28,"  pp.  36-44. 


History  of  American  Prisons  117 

But  at  the  time  of  Captain  Hall 's  travels  and  the  publication  of  his 
narrative,  his  proposal  found  no  echo  in  practice.  The  vicious 
pardoning  of  prisoners  continued,  forming  the  only  inducement  to 
inmates  to  conduct  themselves  properly  within  the  walls.  Instead 
of  the  erection  of  an  honest  and  sympathetic  system  of  rewards  for 
good  conduct,  in  a  commutation  system,  the  States  continued  to 
maintain  the  arbitrary,  unfair,  and  often  reprehensible  method  of 
the  exercise  of  grace,  through  the  chief  magistrate  of  the  State,  the 
governor.  Like  the  proposals  of  Doctor  Rush,  the  dreams  of 
Thomas  Eddy,  the  hopes  of  Louis  Dwight  for  a  farm  whereon 
prisoners  could  recover  their  normal  habits  after  a  term  in  prison, 
the  futile  efforts  of  Warden  Goodell  at  Auburn  for  a  few  brief 
months  to  maintain  a  prison  system  by  loving-kindness,  and  the 
more  successful  undertaking  of  Reverend  Mr.  Wells  at  the  House 
of  Reformation  in  Boston  to  conduct  a  boys'  reform  school  on  a 
basis  of  practical  interest,  participation  in  administration,  and  an 
abundance  of  wholesome  recreation,  so  did  Captain  Hall  find  his 
proposals  far  ahead  of  his  time.  And  to-day,  the  historian,  able 
now  to  chronicle  the  unquestioned  success  of  all  these  once  proposed 
methods,  as  exemplified  by  noteworthy  ** going  concerns"  of  the 
present  day,  pauses,  and  dreams  of  what  might  have  happened, 
that  would  have  changed  the  course  of  prison  history,  had  Rush, 
and  Eddy,  and  Hall,  and  Lieber,  and  Wells,  the  '*  theorists, '^  been 
understood  —  and  followed. 


CHAPTER  XI 


THE  WESTERN  AND  THE  EASTERN  PENITENTIARIES  OF 
PENNSYLVANIA 

It  is  a  coincidence  that  on  the  afternoon  when  I  type  this  chap- 
ter of  the  study  of  early  American  prison  customs,  one  of  the 
earliest  ''customs,"  namely,  a  prison  mutiny,  is  announced  in  the 
press  as  occurring  in  the  very  prison  that  we  are  about  to  consider 
—  The  Western  Penitentiary  of  Pennsylvania.  A  hundred  and 
three  years  after  the  authorization  of  the  prison  by  the  Pennsyl- 
vania Legislature,  Pittsburg  police  and  other  armed  forces  are 
keeping  a  throng  of  inmates  at  bay,  within  the  prison  yard,  where 
burning  shop  buildings  rise  behind  the  wild  prisoners. 

Prison  riots  are  not  frequent  to-day.  The  ordinary  humane 
methods  of  progressive  prison  wardens  have  made  such  an  occur- 
rence a  rarity.  Hardly  a  serious  riot  has  occurred  in  Eastern 
prisons  in  the  last  ten  years.  But  in  the  early  days  of  American 
prisons,  we  have  seen  that  they  were  frequent.  And  it  was  to  make 
impossible  the  mingling  of  the  prisoners,  and  the  consequent  plot- 
ting, that  both  the  Auburn  system  of  ''silence,"  and  the  Pennsyl- 
vania system  of  "separation"  were  invented  and  put  into  effect 
during  the  third  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

In  1818,  the  State  of  Pennsylvania  took  the  radical  step  of 
authorizing  a  prison,  with  entire  separation  of  each  prisoner  from 
the  other  in  a  separate  cell,  and  absolute  separation  of  the  prisoner 
from  any  work.  The  difference  between  the  Auburn  system  and  the 
Pennsylvania  system  was  the  difference  between  association  with 
silence  and  separation.  The  Auburn  system  ultimately  spread 
throughout  the  United  States,  but  had  practically  no  structural 
influence  in  Europe.  The  Pennsylvania  system,  on  the  other  hand, 
after  being  imitated  in  New  Jersey  and  Rhode  Island  in  the  State 
prisons  there,  was  soon  abandoned  in  the  United  States,  except  in 
the  State  of  its  origin.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Pennsylvania  system 
became  the  standard  in  many  parts  of  Europe. 

Around  the  comparative  merits  of  the  two  systems  was  waged  for 
several  generations  the  greatest  contest  ever  developed  in  prison 
reform.  Acrimonious  and  often  misleading  statements  and  argu- 
ments were  a  part  of  the  battle,  which  was  conducted  from  head- 
quarters, respectively,  in  Boston  and  Philadelphia,  the  homes  of 
the  Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society  and  the  Pennsylvania  Society 
for  Alleviating  the  Miseries  of  Public  Prisons.  Europe  as  well  as 
the  United  States  debated  the  two  competing  systems,  in  conferences 
national  and  international.  Even  to-day,  the  European  system  of 
prison  architecture  differs  radically  from  the  American,  and  now, 
after  nearly  a  century,  the  architectural  principle  of  the  "outside 
cell, ' '  or  the  cell  with  the  window  to  the  outer  air,  as  distinguished 

[118] 


HisTOP-Y  OF  American  Prisons  119 

from  the  ''inside  cell,"  or  the  cell  with  the  door  furnishing  the 
only  light  from  a  corridor  between  the  cell  and  the  outside  wall  of 
the  cellhouse,,  is  beginning  to  be  adopted  once  more  in  American 
prison  architecture,  a  vindication  of  the  Pennsylvania  principle. 

Yet  the  two  systems  were  more  alike,  from  the  beginning,  than 
they  were  different  from  each  other.    They  were  similar  in  holding        / 
to  the  fundamental  principle  that  prisoners  under  no  circumstances    / 
should  communicate  with  each  other.    The  two  systems  held,  fur-^ 
thermore,  that  prisoners  should  he  separate  from  each  other  in 
individual  cells  at  night.  .^ 

The  basic  difference  between  the  Auburn  system  and  the  Pennsyl-  \ 
vania  system  was,  that  whereas  the  Pennsylvania  system  extended  I 
the  principle  of  the  separation  of  convicts  from  each  other  to  cover  I 
every  minute  of  the  twenty-four  hours,  or  in  other  words,  to  provide  / 
for  the  perpetual  separation  of  inmates  from  each  other,  the  Auburn  / 
system  brought  the  convicts  together  during  the  day  in  workshops  I 
and  in  the  messhall,  but  under  enforced  perpetual  silence.  The  I 
Pennsylvania  system  became  popularly  known  as  the  ' '  separate  / 
system, ' '  and  the  Auburn  system  as  the  ' '  silent  system. ' ' 

The  Pennsylvania  Law  of  1818  provided  for  the  erection  in 
Pittsburg  of  a  penitentiary,  which  should  be  so  constructed  as  to 
provide  cells  for  the  separate  confinement  of  prisoners.  So  intense 
was  the  feeling  that  a  clear  departure  should  be  made  from  all 
previous  pernicious  methods,  that  the  new  prison  reform  movement 
in  Pennsylvania  advocated,  and  successfully,  that  in  the  prison  to 
be  constructed  at  Pittsburg  there  should  be  absolute  deprivation  / 
of  work,  as  well  as  enforced  perpetual  solitude.  The  new  prison 
was  to  abandon  all  theory  of  classification  —  which  was  the  chief 
contribution  of  the  Walnut  Street  Prison  of  1790  —  and  instead 
was  to  provide  a  solitary  cell  for  each  prisoner's  constant  use.  In 
short,  each  cell  was  thereby  to  become  a  miniature  prison  in  itself, 
and   classification   was   therefore   unnecessary.^ 

Three  years  later,  in  1821,  a  similar  law  provided  for  the  erection, 
likewise  on  the  principle  of  solitary  confinement,  of  a  prison  for 
250  prisoners  in  Philadelphia.^  The  State  was  thus  embarked 
seriously  upon  an  experiment  heretofore  untried  in  this  country, 
and  which  would  be  decisive.  No  reasonable  expense  was  to  be 
spared  to  make  these  prisons  adequate  and  suitable. 

By  1826  the  Pittsburg  prison  was  finished,  and  20  prisoners  were 
admitted.  It  had  cost  $165,346,  and  provided  a  total  of  190  individ- 
ual cells,^  at  a  cost  per  cell  of  $978.95.  The  prison  was  built  in 
an  unusual  form,  that  of  a  semi-circle.    The  cells, 

**  forming  the  circumference  of  the  circle,  were  built  in  a  double  range,  being 
placed  back  to  back,  as  at  Auburn,  but  in  the  form  of  a  circle,  the  diameter      / 
of  which  was  320  feet;  part  of  the  cells  facing  the  boundary  wall,  and  the  ^ 
other  part  fronting  the  large  internal  area.     .     .     .     The  cells  were  each  about 
9  feet  long  and  7  feet  wide.     ...     In  the  front  of  each  cell  was  a  small 
yard,  6  feet  wide,  having  a  doorway  in  front." 

1  B.  and  T.,  p.  5. 

2  Richard  Vaux.     Sketch,  p.  33. 

«  Report  of  Shaler-Wharton-King,  p.  36. 


120  History  of  American  Prisons 

By  1827,  this  Western  Penitentiary,  as  it  was  called,  was  in 
operation,  with  a  few  persons  confined  therein.  Each  prisoner  was 
shut  up,  night  and  day,  in  a  cell,  but  without  any  employment. 
The  cells  moreover,  had  been  built  so  small  that  the  maintenance 
of  any  trade  was  impossible  that  required  any  equipment.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  architect  had  failed  to  build  a  sound-proof  prison, 
and  the  prisoners  were  able  to  talk  with  each  other  from  cell  to 
cell  through  gratings.*  In  short,  the  worst  possible  results  had 
been  achieved.  The  prisoners  could  not  work,  but  they  could  by 
conversation  mutually  contaminate  each  other.^  The  State  had 
sunk  nearly  $200,000  in  a  prison  that  was  worse  than  useless,  on 
the  basis  of  the  adopted  system. 

The  board  of  managers  of  this  Pittsburg  prison  reported  as^arly 
as  1828  to  the  Legislature  that  it  was  hardly  practicable,  with  the 
present  plan  of  the  penitentiary,  to  carry  into  effect  complete 
solitary  confinement,  without  keeping  the  prisoners  constantly 
immured  in  their  respective  cells.^  The  board  held  this  to  be  so 
inimical  to  health  that  they  were  therefore  allowing  the  prisoners 
to  exercise  before  the  cells  of  the  other  prisoners  in  the  corridors.' 
One  of  the  inspectors  even  urged  the  establishment  of  workhouses, 
where  the  prisoners  might  work  in  association  as  at  Auburn. 

By  1833,  the  board  had  bluntly  recommended  that  the  prison 
should  be  either  sold  or  demolished,  and  in  the  same  year  the 
Legislature  passed  an  act  authorizing  the  demolition  of  the  cells 
within  the  walls  of  the  Western  Penitentiary,  and  the  construction 
of  cells  similar  to  those  that  had  meanwhile  been  built  at  the 
Eastern  Penitentiary  in  Philadelphia.^  The  Pittsburg  prison  was 
by  its  construction  suitable  neither  for  separate  confinement  nor 
for  labor.  This  prison  had  no  significance  in  the  prison  reform 
movement,  save  to  point  out  a  glaring  and  very  expensive  mistake 
4»-^).eiiolQgicaI^rincip3^^ 

Meanwhile,  attention  was  being  fastened  upon  the  plans  for  a 
new  prison  in  Philadelphia.  This  institution  was  to  be  capable  of 
holding  250  prisoners  **on  the  principle  of  the  solitary  confinement 
of  the  convicts."^  Eleven  citizens  were  appointed  a  commission 
to  secure  a  site  and  build  a  prison  thereon.  No  provision  was  made 
in  the  law  as  to  the  employment  or  non-employment  of  convicts. 
Plans  presented  by  the  architect,  John  Haviland,  were  selected 
in  competition  in  1821.  Haviland  was  an  English  architect  who 
had  taken  up  residence  in  Philadelphia.^^  A  site  for  the  prison  was 
chosen,  at  *  *  Cherry  Hill, ' '  several  miles  from  the  city,  of  about 
ten  acres. 

In  this  new  prison  we  find  the  first  effort  —  and  a  most  impres- 
sive effort  —  on  the  part  of  a  State  to  erect  a  massive,  imposing 
and  even  monumental  edifice.     It  was  easy,  of  course,  to  pass  in 

*B.  and  T. 

s  B.  P.  D.  S.     Reports  of  1828.  p.  193. 

«  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1830,  p.  364. 

'B.  P.  D.  S.     Reports  of  1828,  p.  193. 

8  R.  Vaux,  p.  33. 

•Fourth  Report.     Inspectors  of  E.  P.,  1832,  p.  22. 

"  Julius,  d.   am.  Besserungs  Systeme,  p.  5. 


History  of  American  Prisons  121 

thought  from  the  stronghold-type  to  the  fortress  and  monumental 
type.  The  aim  of  the  building  commissioners  was  to  give  to  this 
new  prison  an  unusual  degree  of  solidity,  durability  and  grave 
impressiveness.  Like  the  other  prisons  we  have  described,  at 
Auburn  and  Sing  Sing,  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  has  endured  unto 
our  day,  and  is  still  in  use.  It  was,  at  the  time  of  its  building,  the 
most  extensive  edifice  in  the  United  States.^^ 

A  certain  George  Smith  wrote  in  1829,  of  this  prison : 

"The  Penitentiary  is  the  only  edifice  in  the  country  calculated  to  convey  to 
our  citizens  the  external  appearance  of  those  magnificent  and  picturesque 
castles  of  the  middle  ages,  which  contribute  to  embellish  the  scenery  of 
Europe. ' ' 

The  front  entrance  was  called  the  most  imposing  in  the  United 
States.  The  cornerstone  of  the  prison  was  laid  on  May  22,  1823, 
by  Roberts  Vaux,  one  of  the  commissioners,  and  a  man  who  wrote 
much  of  prison  reform  in  his  period.  It  was  the  earliest  example 
of  the  utilization  of  an  American  prison  as  a  subject  for  ponderous 
and  elaborate  architecture. 

Although  the  building  was  thus  initiated  in  1823,  only  three  of 
the  wings  had  been  completed  by  1825,  and  these  contained  but 
114  cells.^^  The  prison  was  not  occupied  until  1829.  The  interven-^^ 
ing  period  was  one  of  serious  and  prolonged  deliberation  as  to  the 
proper  methods  of  administration  and  discipline  to  be  introduced 
into  the  new  prison.  The  opinion  was  by  no  means  universal  that 
the  separate  confinement  of  prisoners  at  all  times,  and  particularly 
without  employment,  was  a  sound  principle. 

Auburn  Prison  was  beginning  to  be  heard  from.  In  the  old 
Walnut  Street  Prison  there  had  been  but  a  few  cells  devoted  to 
solitary  confinement.  The  new  prison  in  Philadelphia  was  to  con- 
fine all  prisoners  thus  —  and  at  this  date  the  sentiment  was  strongly 
held  that  no  employment  of  the  prisoners  during  their  incarcera- 
tion would  be  admissible.  The  following  arguments,  summarized  by 
the  writer,  were  urged  in  favor  of  the  extreme  plan  of  solitary 
confinement  without  work.^^  It  should  be  remembered  that  the 
experience  of  Auburn  Prison  with  solitary  confinement  without 
work  in  1822  and  1823  was  not  well  known  at  this  time  in 
Philadelphia : 

Solitary  confinement  without  labor  would  effectively  separate  the  prisoners 
from  each  other,  and  therefore  from  their  mutually  corrupting  influences. 
No  remedy  could  be  otherwise  found  for  the  radical  evils  of  association,  other 
than  close,  strict,  solitary  confinment,  night  and  day,  without  labor. 

Solitary  confinement,  without  labor,  is  the  severest  kind  of  punishment  to 
the  individual  convict.  Man  craves  social  intercourse.  Isolation  is  a  bitter 
penalty  —  also  a  vigorous  and  constant  warning  to  potential  criminals.  y^ 

Solitary  confinement  without  labor  operates  directly  and  forcibly  upon  the   ^ 
mind.     If  all  external  sources  of  excitement  are  removed,  reflection,  remorse 
and  perhaps  reformation  will  ensue. 

The  term  of  imprisonment  could  be  shortened,  because  the  end  in  view  — 
repentance  and  reformation  —  could  be  attained  in  a  shorter  time.  The  pun- 
ishment, moreover,  being  severer,  the  term  of  imprisonment  should  be 
shortened. 

"  Description  of  the  Penitentiary.  G.  W.  Smith,  1829,  in  R.  Vaux,  p.  56.  Notices 
on  the  Original,  etc. 

12  Julius.     Sittleche  Zusbaende,  Vol.  II,  pace  128. 
"  Shaler- Wharton-King,  p.  17ff. 


122  History  of  American  Prisons 

These  early  arguments  were  violently  opposed  by  the  newly- 
formed  Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society,  the  New  England  militant 
champion  of  the  Auburn  system.^*  Although  the  Society's  head- 
quarters were  in  Boston  the  range  of  interest  of  the  members,  and 
particularly  of  its  tireless  secretary,  Rev.  Louis  Dwight,  covered 
the  entire  country,  wherever  prisons  were  being  contemplated,  built 
or  operated.  The  harrowing  experiences  of  Auburn  Prison  with 
Solitary  confinement  without  labor  came  gradually  to  make  a  deep 
impression  upon  the  Philadelphians. 

Auburn  Prison  was,  moreover,  already  also  emphasizing  the  great 
economic  value  of  keeping  prisoners  at  work  productively.  And  so, 
after  100  cells  had  been  built  in  the  new  prison  at  Philadelphia, 
the  work  was  halted,  and  a  commission  of  the  Legislature  was 
created  in  1826,  consisting  of  Charles  Shaler,  Edward  King,  and 
T.  I.  Wharton,  to  report  as  soon  as  possible  on  the  best  system  of 
prison  discipline  that  might  be  adopted. 

On  December  20th,  1827,  the  commission,  after  disposing  in  their 
report  of  capital  punishment,  mutilations,  brandings,  whippings, 
transportation,  banishment  and  simple  imprisonment  (with  the 
inevitable  consequent  commingling  of  prisoners)  as  out  of  the 
question  in  a  sound  prison  discipline,  came  out  flat-footedly  in 
opposition  to  the  hitherto  accepted  principle,  being  tried  in  Pitts- 
burg, of  separate  imprisonment  without  labor.  Said  the 
commission :  ^^ 

Solitary  confinement  with  labor  is  just  as  effective  as  solitary  confinement 
without  labor  in  preventing  the  communication  of  prisoners  with  each  other. 

Solitary  confinement  without  labor  is  not  at  all  an  equitable  punishment. 
To  some  prisoners  it  would  be  a  fearful  penalty,  to  others  far  less  a 
punishment. 

/  Solitary  confinement  without  labor  will  produce  no  more  serious  or  valuable 
/reflections  on  the  mind  of  the  convict  than  when  broken  by  regular  intervals 
V    of  work. 

Solitary  confinement  without  labor  would  be  a  total  expense  to  the  State 
instead  of  a  system  bringing  a  return  to  the  State  from  the  labor  of  the 
convict. 

Solitary  confinment  without  labor  produces  bodily  infirmities,  disease  and 
insanity  —  as  shown  by  the  experience  of  Auburn  Prison. 

Solitary  confinement  without  labor  renders  the  convict  unable  to  pursue 
an  honest  calling  after  his  discharge  from  prison,  because  of  his  total  idleness 
within  prison  walls. 

The  Legislative  commission  then  proceeded  to  analyze  the  pro- 
ject in  general  of  solitary  imprisonment  with  labor.  The  advan- 
tages were  found  to  be  the  following :  ^^ 

The  entire  separation  of  the  convicts  from  any  society. 
The  acquisition  by  the  convict  of  habits  of  industry. 

The  contribution  by  the  convict  through  his  industry  to  the  expense  of 
maintaining  the  prison. 

Moreover,  a  considerable  variety  of  occupations  could  be  pro- 
vided, such  as  weaving,  cobbling,  tailoring;  and  for  the  more 
extensive    occupations,    such    as    required    large    space,    separate 

1*  B.  p.  D.  S.,  1827,  p.  91. 

«  Shaler- Wharton-King,  p.  27ff, 

"  Shaler-Wharton-King,  p.  4Sff. 


History  of  American  Prisons  123 

individual  workshops  were  possible.  Exercise  could  be  also  ob- 
tained in  the  small  individual  yards,  directly  behind  the  cells  on  the 
ground  floor. 

But  the  commission  went  still  further.  They  even  ventured  to 
disagree  with  the  great  bulk  of  public  opinion  in  Philadelphia 
favorable  to  the  above-mentioned  system.  They  found  serious 
disadvantages  in  the  above  projects.  The  variety  of  occupations 
that  were  possible  in  separate  confinement  was  necessarily  limited, 
as  was  also  the  supply  of  light  or  air  in  the  cells.  Sedentary 
occupations  were  detrimental  to  health.  The  impossibility  of  a 
sufficient  profit  from  the  labor  of  prisoners  under  such  circum- 
stances was  emphasized.  Moreover,  there  could  be  only  occasional 
observation  of  prisoners  by  officials.  Discipline  of  convicts  who 
refused  to  labor  would  be  difficult,  it  was  said. 

And  in  conclusion,  therefore,  the  commission  recommended  that 
in  the  prison  yard  of  the  new  prison  there  be  erected,  for  the  pur- 
poses of  completing  the  Eastern  Penitentiary,  a  building  on  the 
style  of  Mount  Pleasant  Prison,  or  of  Wethersfield  in  Connecticut, 
with  800  cells,  and  also  that  workshops  be  erected  for  the  joint 
labor  of  convicts.  The  said  prison  should  be  supplementary  to  the 
cellblocks  already  erected. 

In  recommending  these  features,  the  commission's  attitude  was 
heretical,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  Philadelphia  group  of  reform- 
ers, and  the  recommendations  were  lost  in  the  sand.  The  prison, 
when  finally  completed,  was  practically  on  the  original  plan,  as 
adopted  by  the  commission  appointed  to  build  the  prison. 

This  issue  as  to  the  relative  value  of  the  several  systems:  Pitts- 
burgh, Auburn,  Philadelphia,  was  a  very  intense  one  among  the 
prison  reform  forces  of  the  time,  as  is  evidenced  by  the  following 
quotation  from  a  letter  written  by  William  Roscoe,  in  his  old  age, 
to  Dr.  Hosack,  an  American  friend  of  Thomas  Eddy  in  New 
York:  ^8 

"The  relinquishment  of  it  (i.  e.,  the  principle  of  labor)  for  the  Bastile 
system  of  solitary  confinement  would  have  grieved  me  more  than  I  can  express ; 
but,  thank  God,  my  dread  of  that  is  over;  and  I  shall  now  die  in  peace, 
convinced  that  the  time  will  arrive  when  my  own  country  (England)  will 
follow  the  example.  *' 

Which  was  a  true  prophecy. 

Let  us  now  become  acquainted  with  the  extraordinarily  carefully 
worked-out  plan  of  the  new  penitentiary,  unique  in  the  United 
States,  but  clearly  showing  English  influences.  No  other  prison 
of  this  kind  survives  at  all  intact  in  the  United  States  to-day.  One 
can,  however,  still  visit  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  and  find  the  main 
architectural  scheme  of  the  prison  well  preserved.  It  is  a  notable 
historical  monument. 

The  prison  was  located  about  two  and  a  half  miles  from  the  city 
of  Philadelphia,  and  about  one-half  mile  east  of  the  Schuylkill 
River."  The  yard  wall,  of  stone,  30  feet  high,  12  feet  thick  at  the 
bottom  and  tapering  to  2%  feet  in  thickness  at  the  top,  enclosed 

"  Description  mainly  from  B.  P   D.  S.     Rpport  for  1827. 
"Life  of  Thomas  Eddy,  p.  324. 


124  History  of  American  Prisons 

approximately  twelve  acres.  This  wall,  including  the  keeper's 
house  (a  part  of  the  south  wall)  cost  about  $200,000,  which  would 
be  a  most  noteworthy  expenditure  for  such  purposes  even  in  these 
days. 

The  facade  of  the  prison  was  670  feet  in  length.  In  the  center 
of  the  yard  was  a  rotunda  or  "observatory,"  from  which  seven 
cellblocks  diverged,  like  the  rays  of  a  star  —  an  architectural  device 
that  gave  rise  to  the  term  —  Eadial  Plan.  The  cells,  11  feet  9  inches 
long,  by  7  feet  6  inches  wide,^^  were  arranged  in  two  rows,  in  each 
of  the  seven  cellblocks,  and  they  faced  a  central  corridor,  which 
extended  from  the  rotunda  to  the  end  of  each  cellblock. 

A  curious  architectural  development  was  the  individual  ' '  exercis- 
ing yard,"  8  by  20  feet,^^  connected  on  the  outside  of  the  building 
with  each  cell.  The  walls  surrounding  these  exercising  yards  were 
11  feet  6  inches  high.^^  An  opening  from  the  cell  to  the  yard 
enabled  the  prisoner  to  go  out  into  the  yard  for  exercise  at  specified 
times.  There  was  no  door  into  the  cell  from  the  central  corridor 
of  the  cellblock,  but  there  was  a  small  orifice  opening  from  the  cell 
into  the  corridor,  through  which  the  guard  in  the  corridor  might 
observe  the  prisoner,  and  deliver  to  him  his  food. 

In  the  construction,  in  later  years,  of  the  four  last  wings,  doors 
were  provided  from  the  cells  into  the  central  corridor.  There  was 
an  outer  door  of  wood,  with  a  small,  funnel-shaped  observation 
hole  in  the  door.  The  inner  door  was  of  iron  grating,  with  a  small 
opening  in  the  upper  half,  through  which  food  could  be  passed 
into  the  cell,  as  well  as  laundry,  labor  material,  and  the  like.^ 

When  the  inmate  was  let  out  into  the  yard,  he  could  be  watched 
by  the  guard,  either  from  the  wall,  or  by  opening  the  door  of  the 
yard.  The  entrance  to  the  cell  from  the  yard  was  secured  by  double 
doors,  one  of  grated  iron,  and  the  other  of  plank.  In  the  second 
story  of  the  cellblock,  where  obviously  no  yards  were  possible,  the 
prisoner  was  allowed  an  extra  cell.^^  Each  cell  in  the  prison  was 
used  for  dwelling  purposes,  was  furnished  with  a  bedstead,  clothes 
rail,  seat,  shelf,  tin  cup,  wash  basin,  victuals  pan,  looking  glass, 
combs,  scrubbing  brush,  broom,  straw  mattress,  one  sheet,  one 
blanket  and  one  coverlid.  There  was  a  toilet  and  water  spigot  in 
every  cell. 

When  De  Metz  and  Blouet  visited  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  late 
in  the  thirties,  they  found  that 

''most  prisoners  prefer  the  upper  cells  to  the  lower  ones  with  courts,  because 
the  lower  cells  are  cold  and  damp  and  never  receive  any  sun,  because 
shielded  by  high  walls.  The  stronger  convicts  like  the  lower  cells  because 
there  is  more  chance  for  exercise.  The  cells  are  very  hot  in  summer  and 
damp  in  other  seasons.  High  walls  prevent  circulation  of  air.  The  prison 
officials  thought  to  give  up  the  courts,  but  their  elimination  would  have 
incited  to  attempts  at  escape  underneath  the  walls.^ 

"R.  Vaux,  Sketch,  p.  62. 
»  R.  Vaux,  Sketch,  p.  24. 
^  R.,  Vaux,  Sketch,  p.  62. 
22  R.  Vaux,  Sketch,  p.  62. 
28  Julius.  S.  Z.,  p.  180. 
2*De  Metz  and  Blouet,  p.  56. 


History  of  American  Prisons  125 

The  waterclosets  were  primitive,  and  permitted  conversation 
between  prisoners  in  adjacent  cells,  by  means  of  the  pipes,  but 
only  during  the  ten  to  fifteen  minutes  a  day  while  the  pipes  were 
being  flushed.  To  guard  against  such  conversation,  serious  penal- 
ties were  inflicted  upon  inmates  thus  transgressing,  and  a  force  of 
guards  were  stationed  in  the  central  corridors  of  the  wings  to 
spy  upon  the  prisoners  during  this  process.^^ 

For  ventilation,  there  were  several  holes,  about  three  inches  in 
diameter,  near  the  floor  of  the  cell,  passing  through  the  wall  to  the 
exercise  yard.  There  were  also  several  flues.  The  method  of 
heating  was  by  hot  air.  The  prisoners  were  fed  in  their  cells. 
Every  part  of  the  building  was  so  constructed  that  it  should  never 
be  necessary  to  remove  the  prisoner  from  his  cell  and  exercising 
yard,  except  when  sick.  No  chapel  and  no  schoolrooms  were  pro- 
vided, and  no  places  for  labor  except  the  cells. 

It  is  clear  from  the  above  description  that  the  architectural 
features  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  were  worked  out  with  much 
deliberation  and  system.  Consequently,  it  is  of  special  interest  to 
trace  the  origin  of  this  general  plan  of  construction,  particularly 
in  view  of  the  remarkable  influence  it  had  in  the  following  decades 
upon  the  construction  of  prisons  in  European  countries. 

It  has  been  quite  generally  assumed  that  the  design  of  the  Eastern 
Penitentiary  was  original  with  John  Haviland,  the  architect.  But 
we  must  first  of  all  remember  that  Haviland  was  from  England, 
and  but  recently  settled  in  Philadelphia.^^  The  supposed 
**  American '^  origin  of  the  Pennsylvania  plan  is  unquestionably  an 
error.  As  early  as  1820,  the  London  Society  for  the  Improvement 
of  Prison  Discipline  had  sent  to  the  Philadelphia  Society  for  Alle- 
viating the  Miseries  of  Public  Prisons  a  book  of  architectural  plans 
of  prisons  that  the  London  Society  had  recently  published.^  The 
London  Society 's  proposed  plan  for  a  county  jail  for  four  hundred 
persons  embodied  a  clear-cut  radial  scheme  of  six  wings,  and  a 
central  *'hub"  or  rotunda.  The  similarity  of  the  Haviland  plan 
to  this  and  to  other  types  of  English  local  prisons  is  far  too  great 
to  be  a  coincidence.  Haviland 's  plan  was  a  clear  case  of  borrowing 
an  idea. 

The  radial  type,  indeed,  had  appeared  in  England  in  the  case  of 
the  Ipswich  County  Jail  as  early  as  1790.^^  Haviland  developed 
the  radial  plan,  especially  by  the  creation  of  the  central  building  as 
an  observatory,  and  by  the  addition  of  exercise  yards  attached  to 
each  ground  floor  cell.  But  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  is  a  developed 
imitation  of  earlier  English  prison  plans. 

Furthermore,  William  Crawford,  who  visited  the  United  States 
in  1832  as  an  official  representative  of  the  British  Government, 
claimed  that  the  main  principles  of  the  system  installed  at  the 
Eastern  Penitentiary  were  in  force  as  early  as  1794,  approximately, 
in  the  Gloucester,  England,  penitentiary.    With  some  trifling  differ- 

25  Julius.    Sittleche  Zusbaende,  Vol.  II,  p.  180. 

2«  London  Society  for  Prison  Discipline.  Report  of  the  Committee  for  1820,  p.  36. 
Rules  for  Gaols.  1821,  p.  45ff. 

27  .Julius,     d.  amk.  B.  S.,  p.  4. 

28  On  the  Form  and  Construction  of  Prisons,  London,  1826. 


126  History  of  American  Prisons 

ences  in  its  arrangements,  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  seemed  to 
Crawford  to  be  but  a  counterpart  of  the  Bridewell  at  Glasgow, 
Scotland,  a  prison  put  into  operation  by  1824.^^ 

However,  great  the  similarity  was  in  the  matter  of  methods  of 
administration  at  Gloucester  or  Glasgow,  the  direct  line  of  descent 
of  the  Pennsylvania  system  is  easy  to  trace  on  American  soil, 
without  attributing  preponderating  influence  to  the  British  Isles. 
As  early  as  1788,  the  Philadelphia  Prison  Society  stated  that,  on 
the  whole,  they  were  unanimously  of  the  opinion  that  solitary 
confinement  and  hard  labor,  with  total  abstention  from  spirituous 
liquors,  would  *' prove  the  most  effective  means  of  reforming  these 
unhappy  creatures.^'^ 

In  1827,  the  estimated  cost  of  the  prison,  when  it  should  be  com- 
pleted, was  $500,000  for  250  prisoners,  or  $2,000  per  prisoner,  an 
enormous  sum  even  for  the  present  day,  and  one  which  at  the  time 
brought  down  severe  criticism  upon  the  prison.  The  New  England 
prison  reform  group  did  not  fail  to  seize  the  chance  to  contrast 
this  huge  expenditure  with  the  expenditure  for  Wethersfield,  the 
Connecticut  State  Prison  (which  is  another  prison  still  in  use 
to-day).  This  prison  was  erected  in  1827  for  approximately  $35,000 
for  136  prisoners,^"  an  average  per  capita  expenditure  of  nearly 
$258.00. 

For  several  years,  the  completion  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary 
y  was  held  up,  because  of  the  vigorous  attacks  upon  the  general  plan 
^  of  structure  and  administration.  The  Boston  Society  annually 
raised  its  voice  in  loud  protests.  At  what  amazing  per  capita  cost 
was  this  prison  being  built !  How  would  it  be  possible  to  exclude 
the  possibilities  of  communication  between  prisoners?  Look  at 
Pittsburgh's  failure!  How  nasty  to  make  of  each  cell  a  water 
closet!  What  folly  not  to  realize  that  a  prison  should  make  as 
much  as  possible  from  the  labor  of  prisoners  toward  the  mainte- 
nance of  the  institution!  Was  not  Auburn  Prison  practically 
paying  all  its  expenses?  Gershom  Powers,  the  Auburn  warden, 
dilated  upon  many  structural  disadvantages  of  the  plan.*^  The 
Shaler-King-Wharton  report  above  referred  to  had  deterred  for  a 
time  the  Legislature  from  making  appropriations  for  the  completion 
of  the  buildings,  but  in  the  end  the  building  commission  carried 
the  day. 

While  the  erection  of  the  new  prison  was  being  thus  delayed, 
conditions  of  lawlessness  in  and  about  Philadelphia  were  becoming 
most  serious  —  reminiscent,  indeed,  of  similar  terrifying  conditions 
prior  to  the  establishment  of  the  Walnut  Street  Prison  in  1790  as 
a  penitentiary.  In  the  report  of  the  board  of  inspectors  of  the 
Eastern  Penitentiary  for  1836,  it  was  stated,  in  retrospect,  that, 
immediately  prior  to  the  opening  of  the  new  prison  in  1829 : 

''it  was  no  novelty  to  hear  of  combinations  of  rogues  for  the  purpose  of 
housebreaking,  counterfeiting,  robbery  in  the  public  streets,  and  violence  of 

2»  Crawford,  p.  13. 

»0B.i  Pv   D.   S.,  Vol.   I,  p.   124. 

81  G.  S.     General  Description,  etc.,  pp.  86fif. 

82  Report  of  Joint  Committee  of  Leg.  of  Pa.,  relative  to  E.  P«.  of  Pa.,  Harnsburg, 
1835,  p.  20. 


History  of  American  Prisons  127 

all  kinds.  It  was  no  uncommon  thing  for  the  magistracy  and  other  officers 
to  form  'possies'  to  visit  the  haunts  of  vice  and  the  purlieus  of  wretchedness 
to  ferret  out  felons.  Seldom  was  there  a  conviction  above  the  grade  of 
petty  larceny  but  disclosed  a  chain  of  complicated  villiany  involving  the 
committal  of  two  or  three  more. 

**Our  court  calendar  exhibited  an  array  of  crime  at  each  time,  startling 
to  the  philanthropist  and  arguing  a  deplorable  state  of  society.  .  .  .  An 
auxiliary  police  was  of  necessity  at  times  established  by  volunteers  from  the 
citizens  who  patrolled  the  streets  to  secure  their  sleeping  brethren  from  the 
insidious  assaults  of  the  incendiary  and  burglar." 

The  first  inmate  was  received  by  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  on 
October  25th,  1829.  From  the  above  description,  it  is  clear  that  the 
institution  opened  very  much  on  the  defensive.  During  1829,  a 
board  of  inspectors  had  been  appointed,  to  take  over  the  manage- 
ment of  the  institution.  The  chairman  of  the  board  was  Charles  S. 
Coxe,  a  judge  of  the  district  court  of  Philadelphia.  Other  mem- 
bers were  Josiah  Randall,  a  prominent  lawyer  of  the  same  city; 
Roberts  Vaux,  a  philanthropist  of  means,  whose  name  and  that  of 
his  son,  Richard  Vaux,  were  for  many  decades  associated  with 
prison  reform;  John  Swift,  a  lawyer,  and  Daniel  H.  Miller,  a 
merchant  and  State  senator.^  The  board  appointed  as  warden 
Samuel  R.  Wood,  a  Quaker ;  he  was  a  manufacturer,  and  had  visited 
European  prisons.  He  had  been  one  of  the  building  commis- 
sioners,^^ and  was  called  a  ** practical"  man.  Dr.  Franklin  Bache, 
who  later  became  noted  for  the  comprehensive  and  valuable  statis- 
tics he  furnished  regarding  the  health  of  the  prisoners,  and  who 
was  a  great  grandson  of  Benjamin  Franklin,^*  was  appointed  prison  J 
physician. 

In  1829,  a  supplementary  law  was  passed,  providing  that  separate 
confinement  of  prisoners,  mth  labor,  should  be  the  discipline  of  the 
prison.  Uniform  rules  were  adopted  by  the  Legislature  for  both 
the  Western  and  the  Eastern  Penitentiaries.  Among  these  rules 
were  the  following : 

The  warden  should  be  appointed  semi-annually. 

The  inspectors  should  serve  without  pay,  and  should  visit  the  Penitentiary 
at  least  twice  a  week. 

There  should  be  an  unpaid  chaplain.  (This  provision  of  **no  salary'* 
worked  to  the  great  disadvantage  of  the  institution  for  many  years.) 

The  inspectors  on  their  visits  should  speak  to  the  prisoners  apart  from  any 
of  the  officials  of  the  prison. 

The  warden  must  reside  In  the  prison,  and  must  visit  each  prisoner  at 
least  once  a  day. 

He  should  appoint  the  under-keepers,  called  overseers,  and  must  not  absent 
himself  from  the  prison  over  night  without  the  written  permission  of  the 
inspectors. 

Keepers  were  obligated  to  inspect  the  condition  of  the  prisoners  at  least 
three  times  a  day. 

The  physician  must  visit  every  prisoner  at  least  twice  each  week,  and 
oftener  if  necessary.     He  must  also  examine  each  prisoner  on  reception. 

In  addition  to  the  permission  given  to  certain  State  officials  to  visit  the 
prison  and  prisoners,  the  same  permission  was  given  to  the  Acting  Committee 
for  the  Philadelphia  Society  for  Alleviating  the  Miseries  of  Public  Prisons. 

82  R.  Vaux.     Sketch,  p.  83. 

"  Second  Annual  Report  of  Board  of  Inspectors. 

«*De  Metz  and  Blouet,  p.  32. 

Doctor  Bache  before  serving  as  physician  In  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  had  been 
In  a  similar  capacity  in  .the  Walnut  Street  Prison  for  12  years. 


128  History  of  American  Prisons 

The  same  curious  custom  of  a  final  interview  by  the  warden  with 
the  prisoner  which  was  customary  at  Auburn  Prison,  was  made 
mandatory  by  the  rules  and  regulations  at  Philadelphia.  After  the 
interview,  the  convict  was  to  receive  four  dollars  from  the  State 
''whereby  the  temptation  to  commit  offenses  against  society,  before 
employment  can  be  obtained,  may  be  obviated." 

To  what  extent  four  dollars  would  stand  between  a  released 
prisoner  and  another  crime,  were  it  impossible  for  him  to  find 
immediate  employment,  is  a  question  not  hard  to  answer.  The 
State  of  New  York  was  giving  to  the  released  convict  only  three 
dollars.  In  neither  Auburn  nor  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  was  there 
any  chance  for  the  prisoner  to  earn  any  money  toward  his  own 
support  when  he  should  emerge  from  prison.  Here  again,  one  has 
to  wonder  at  the  wretchedly  false  economy  and  poor  psychology  that 
would  send  a  convict  out,  almost  literally  stripped  of  all  means  to 
make  an  honest  living,  and  cursed  with  the  stigma  of  a  prison 
sentence. 

Yet  the  thing  happens  to-day,  in  the  State  of  New  York.  The 
ten  dollars  which  is  given  to  the  convict  on  release  amounts  to  no 
more  than  the  three  dollars  of  a  century  ago.  The  clothes  he 
receives  are  generally  shed  at  the  first  pawnbrokers,  if  possible. 
They  have  the  prison  pattern  and  the  uncouth  cut.  The  man  who 
during  the  period  of  incarceration  has  been  earning  the  bitterly 
ironical  sum  of  one  and  one-half  cents  a  day,  which  may  be  dimin- 
ished by  punishments,  is  still  typical,  upon  his  release,  of  the  folly 
of  discharging  the  convict  so  poorly  equipped  with  money  as  to 
make  the  very  presence  of  money  in  the  possession  of  others  a 
temptation  to  crime.  It  is  only  in  States  where  a  system  of  labor 
prevails  that  secures  for  the  prisoner  some  chance  to  earn,  if  not  a 
wage,  at  least  some  money  for  overtime  work,  that  the  prisoner 
is  freed  in  part  from  this  grave  condition  on  his  release  from 
prison. 

Returning  to  the  Eastern  Penitentiary,  we  find  that  although 
the  sponsors  of  the  plan  of  constant  separation  of  prisoners,  with 
labor,  were  positive  that  the  new  prison  would  be 

**an  apparatus  for  the  expeditious,   certain  and  economical  eradication   of 
vice,  and  the  production  of  reformation. ' ' " 

Richard  Vaux,  writing  in  1872  an  historical  treatment  of  the 
Eastern  Penitentiary,  stated  ^  that  when  the  prison  was  ready  for 
the  reception  of  the  first  inmate,  in  1829,  little  was  known  as  to 
the  effect  of  Ihe  solitary  discipline  on  the  prisoners. 

Said  Vaux : 

*' Indeed,  the  discipline  itself  was  a  theory.  For  many  years  following,  it 
was  not  possible  to  do  more  than  supervise  the  administration  and  put  it 
into  working  order.  It  required  some  time  to  settle  what  were  the  conse- 
quences of  the  discipline.  ...  To  finish  all  the  buildings,  suffer  the 
more  serious  criticisms  of  the  management,  and  harmonize  almost  irrecon- 
cilable opinions,  if  not  feelings,  among  those  who  were  first  connected  with 

86  G.  W.  Smith  in  Vaux,  p.  58. 
»»p.  85. 


History  of  American  Prisons  129 

the  administration  of  the  Penitentiary,  distracted  the  minds  of  those  who 
were  charged  with  the  government  of  the  institution.  .  .  .  From  1829 
to  1835,  the  attention  of  the  inspectors  was  not  wholly  concentrated  on  the 
workings  of  the  system.  .  .  .  The  period  from  1829  to  1849  was  one  of 
experiment  and  experience.  From  1849  to  1870  one  of  development  and 
progress. ' ' 

The  seventh  and  last  wing  of  the  prison,  on  the  original  plan 
of  Haviland,  was  not  finished  until  1836,  when  the  institution 
offered  a  total  of  586   cells.®^ 

"Julius.      Sittleche  Zusbaende,   Vol.   II,   p.    129. 


CHAPTER  XII 


THE  EARLY  DEVELOPMENT  OF  PRISON  LABOR  IN  NEW  YORK 

Within  ten  years  from  the  time  when  the  Auburn  system  was 
established,  in  1823,  there  developed  out  of  the  much-praised 
*' perfection ' '  of  the  system  itself  an  unexpected  and  highly  com- 
plicated problem.  For  just  when  Auburn  Prison  began  to  boast 
exultantly  that  it  had  ceased  to  be  a  financial  burden  to  the  State, 
and  that  its  annual  earnings  were  beginning  to  exceed  its  annual 
disbursements,  the  ''mechanics'^  of  the  State  became  violently 
aroused  to  the  threatening  competition  of  convict  labor  with  ''free 
labor." 

Moreover,  the  Mount  Pleasant  Prison  at  Sing  Sing  became  also, 
as  early  as  1831,  six  years  after  its  founding,  a  target  of  bitter 
criticism  from  mechanics  in  New  York  City,  who  claimed  that  the 
prison  was  making  contracts  to  sell  marble  at  prices  far  below  those 
possible  in  the  open  market.  The  prison  was  furnishing  to  a 
museum  in  New  York  marble  for  $500  that  would  cost  from  $7,000 
to  $8,000  in  the  open  market.^  This  led  to  one  of  the  first  of  the 
almost  innumerable  petitions  to  the  Legislature  from  mechanics 
during  the  next  decade  for  relief  from  this  growing  and  menacing 
evil. 

Labor  was  becoming  at  Auburn  and  Mount  Pleasant  prisons  a 
source  of  profit  to  the  State,  through  the  letting  of  the  prisoners' 
labor  to  contractors.  Auburn  Prison  was,  by  1825,  a  great  smooth- 
running  industrial  machine  —  when  suddenly  two  highly  disturb- 
ing lines  of  attack  upon  the  system  developed.  Hostile  criticism 
was  leveled  at  the  alleged  barbarous  punishments  necessary  under 
the  Auburn  system.  The  second  line  of  attack  was  from  the  out- 
raged mechanics  of  the  State,  who  saw  their  industrial  life  threat- 
ened with  ruin  through  the  convict  competition.  These  two 
controversial  questions  became  the  chief  problems  of  prison 
administration  in  the  State  of  New  York  between  1825  and  1845, 
the  period  we  are  now  to  consider. 

We  have  already  alluded,  in  Chapter  Ten,  to  the  early  investi- 
gation, in  1826,  by  the  special  commission  of  which  Samuel  M. 
Hopkins  was  chairman  of  Auburn  Prison's  alleged  cruelty  to 
inmates.  Having  dismissed  as  practically  ungrounded  the  accusa- 
tions of  brutality,  the  commissioners  addressed  themselves  to  the 
system  of  labor  at  the  prison.  Endorsing  the  principle  of  letting 
out  the  labor  of  prisoners  within  the  prison  to  contractors,  they 
mildly  criticised  the  prison  authorities  for  having  let  contracts 
without  previous  adequate  public  announcement.  Obviously,  verbal 
announcement  "around  Auburn"  was  not  a  sure  and  impartial 
way  to  advertise  for  bids.  That  favoritism  could  thereby  benefit 
chosen  friends  or  business  acquaintances  was  clear. 

1  Assembly  Document  No.  279,  1831. 

1130] 


History  of  American  Prisons  131 

Moreover,  the  commissioners  found  the  contracts  bringing  in  alto- 
gether too  little  money.  We  read  between  the  lines  the  significance 
of  the  facts  that  the  tailors  earned  for  the  prison  an  average  of 
but  15  cents  a  day,  the  coopers  from  15  to  22  cents,  the  shoemakers 
25  cents,  and  the  weavers  from  10  to  15  cents.  Both  Captain  Lynds 
and  Captain  Powers  favored  the  letting  of  contracts  without  gen- 
eral bidding.  They  held  the  dangers  of  intercourse  between 
irresponsible  contractors  and  prisoners  to  be  so  great  as  to  make 
it  imperative  that  the  warden  should  have  broad  liberty  to  choose 
responsible  contractors. 

It  was  at  this  period  (1828)  that  Auburn  Prison  announced  its 
confidence  that  no  further  appropriations  would  be  needed  from  the 
State  for  maintenance.-  This  was  a  tremendously  powerful  argu- 
ment for  the  continuation,  intact,  of  the  new  system.  (And  this 
kind  of  an  argument  is  to-day,  in  1921,  a  powerful  argument  for 
the  retention  of  contract  labor  in  prisons.)  Other  States  were 
making  money  from  systematic  prison  labor.  Hard  and  steady 
employment  seemed  likely  at  last  to  banish  the  nightmare  of  heavy 
annual  State  expenditures  for  maintenance  and  upkeep.  Moses  C. 
Pillsbury  had  become  warden  of  the  New  Hampshire  State  Prison 
in  1818.  The  loss  to  the  State  in  the  previous  year  had  been 
$4,325.  From  1822  to  1826  the  net  proceeds  (chiefly  from  stone 
cutting)  had  been,  after  defraying  every  expense,  $7,596.^ 

Massachusetts  State  Prison  announced  a  profit  of  $9,151  in  1825 
and  $8,819  in  1826.  Even  the  female  department  of  the  Maryland 
State  Prison,  under  the  able  Mrs.  Rachel  Peri  jo  as  matron,  changed 
its  balance  from  an  average  annual  deficit,  before  she  came,  in  1822, 
of  $1,099  to  an  average  annual  surplus  of  $492.®  Such  reports 
were  in  striking  contrast  to  the  annual  expense  of  the  Walnut 
Street  Prison  of  about  $30,000,  and  to  the  continuing  deficit  of  the 
State  Prison  in  New  York  city,  that  had  since  1797  cost  the  State 
a  total  of  $1,237,343.^  Massachusetts  had  expended  more  than 
$300,000  for  State  prison  maintenance.* 

Old  Newgate  in  Connecticut  had  cost  that  State  since  1791  more 
than  $200,000,^  but  now,  within  six  months  of  the  establishment 
of  the  new  State  prison  at  Wethersfield  in  1827  (see  Chapter  Seven), 
the  net  earnings  of  97  convicts  for  the  State  were  $1,017,  over  all 
expenses  of  management  and  support.^  And  Captain  Lynds,  the 
warden  at  Mount  Pleasant,  said  in  this  same  year  that  he  would 
ask  no  greater  privilege  from  the  State,  when  the  prison  at  Sing 
Sing  should  be  completed,  than  to  receive  the  earnings  of  convicts, 
above  every  expense  for  food,  medical  attendance,  moral  instruc- 
tion, keeping,  etc.,  and  that  he  would  enter  into  a  bond  for 
$100,000  to  release  the  State  from  all  further  charges  for  current 
expenses,  in  consideration  of  receiving  the  proceeds  of  the  labor  of 
the  convicts. 


9 


*B.  p.  D.  S.  1828,  p.  164  —  G.  Powers.  Report,  p.  48. 
»  B.  P.  D.  S.  1826,  p.  34. 


^  B.  P.  D.  S.  1828,  p.  161. 

»  B.  P.  D.  S.  1827,  p.  113. 

«  B.  P.  D.  S.  1828,  p.  163. 

'  B.  P.  D.  S.  1827,  p.  35. 

«  B.  P.  D.  S.  1828,  p.  161. 

*  B.  P.  D.  S.  1828,  p.  164. 


132  History  of  American  Prisons 

In  short,  convicts  were  practically  for  the  first  time  being  turned 
not  only  into  assets  for  the  State,  but  into  a  profitable  business  for 
certain  firms  or  individuals  on  the  outside  who  contracted  for 
the  labor  of  the  convicts,  and  made  ' '  good  money. ' '  It  looked  like 
a  good  bargain  *  *  all  around. ' '  The  prison  philanthropists,  like  the 
Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society,  were  maintaining  that  economy 
was  concomitant  with  moral  improvement  in  a  prison  administra- 
tion, thereby  tacitly  putting  the  stamp  of  approval  on  the  making 
of  money  in  a  prison.  The  public,  wearied  with  alleged  visionary 
schemes  of  reformation,  was  glad  to  have  a  burden  lifted  from 
the  taxpayers  of  the  times.  The  rigid  discipline  of  Auburn  and 
Sing  Sing  prisons  appealed  to  the  public,  which  had  heard  much 
about  the  bad  management  and  the  high  cost  of  the  prisons  of  the 
past,  and  also  of  the  debauchery  and  demoralization  attendant 
apparently  upon  the  existence  of  prisons.  The  cheap  cost  of  con- 
struction of  the  new  type  of  prison,  as  at  Sing  Sing  and  at 
Wethersfield,  by  the  labor  of  prisoners,  was  a  further  appealing 
argument.  It  must  have  appeared  to  the  thoughtful  minds  of  the 
period  that  at  last  the  secret  of  efficient  prison  management  had 
been  revealed. 

We  can  therefore  readily  understand  why  the  new  prison  system 
sprang  into  popularity,  why  severe  punishments  were  in  the  main 
tolerated,  or  why  excuses  were  found  for  their  continuance,  and 
why  the  emphasis  of  the  Auburn  system  shifted  increasingly  from 
producing  reformation  to  producing  profits  for  the  State.  The 
prison  system  was  now  appealing  to  the  State  where  the  State  was 
most  easily  influenced  —  in  its  pocketbook.  Penal  servitude  was 
becoming  a  profitable  business  to  the  State,  and  the  general  feeling 
that  prisoners  should  be  severely  disciplined  was  being  gratified 
at  the  same  time  —  and  justified. 

We  are  analyzing  these  formative  years  in  some  detail  because  it 
was  in  just  these  years  that  there  was  being  firmly  moulded  the 
system  of  prison  discipline  that  became  the  American  standard  for 
generations.  American  life  and  standards  of  to-day  are  well  under- 
stood only  as  one  knows  the  history  of  our  people.  That  special 
phase  of  American  institutional  life  represented  by  our  prisons, 
with  their  remarkable  and  often  intolerably  stupid  and  unjust 
practices,  cannot  be  understood  except  as  we  survey  the  past. 
Powerful  economic  and  moral  forces  have  in  the  past  conditioned 
and  traditionalized  our  penal  institutions.  Administrative  habits 
of  yesterday  and  even  of  to-day,  strong  and  dominant  with  the 
force  of  long  usage,  are  but  the  acquired  characteristics  of  the 
periods  of  the  past.  The  era  that  we  are  now  surveying  was 
primarily  one  in  which  such  methods  and  principles  became  fixed. 
Historically,  therefore,  the  period  from  approximately  1820  to 
1840  is  of  exceptional  significance  in  the  development  of  American 
prison  customs. 

The  net  earnings  of  certain  prisons  continued  to  be  conspicuous 
during  the  next  few  years.     Wethersfield  in  1828  earned  $3,229 


History  op  American  Prisons  133 

above  every  expense  ;^^  Maryland's  penitentiary  at  Baltimore 
registered  net  earnings  of  $9,804.  In  1829,  Wethersfield  earned 
$5,068  over  all  expenses;  Auburn  nearly  $6,000.  By  the  end  of 
March,  1832,  Wethersfield  showed  net  earnings  for  four  and  one- 
half  years  of  $25,853 ;  the  deficit  of  old  Newgate  for  the  same  period 
would  have  been  $51,103,^^  showing  a  net  gain  for  the  Connecticut 
Prison  for  this  period  of  $76,956.  From  1828  to  1833  Auburn 
Prison  netted  over  $25,000."  ^ 

It  was  against  such  impressive  financial  arguments  that,  early 
in  the  thirties,  those  mechanics  of  the  State  of  New  York  who  were 
affected  by  the  specific  prison  industries  began  vehemently  to  pro- 
test. That  which  a  special  committee  of  the  Legislature  in  1833 
called  a  *' magnificent  result  that  could  not  have  been  dreamed  of 
a  few  years  before. ' '  ^^  and  as  emanating  from  the  exalted  spirit 
of  free  governments  —  namely,  self-support  of  prisons  through 
instruction  and  persuasion  of  prisoners  —  the  mechanics  who  were 
stone-cutters,  coopers,  or  weavers  were  already  condemning  as  a 
*  tyrannical  State  monopoly." 

A  factor  that  made  the  industrial  situation  still  more  intense 
was  the  failure  of  the  Sing  Sing  quarries  to  produce  the  anticipated 
high  grade  of  marble.  Moreover,  to  a  Legislative  committee  in 
1832,  the  ignominy  and  humiliation  attached  to  teams  of  convicts, 
pulling  blocks  of  stones  like  weary  dumb  brutes,  and  harnessed  to 
carts,  seemed  so  great  as  to  demand  the  installation  of  other  occupa- 
tions than  quarrying.  The  labor  of  prisoners  should  be  hired  out 
to  contractors,  as  at  Auburn,  Charlestown,  and  Wethersfield.  The 
inspectors  at  Mount  Pleasant  Prison  had  ordered  the  warden  not 
to  make  such  contracts,  because  they  believed  that  any  profit  accru- 
ing therefrom  should  go  to  the  State,  and  not  into  the  pockets  of 
contractors. 

With  this  opinion  the  Legislative  committee  begged  to  differ." 
Even  the  Reverend  Louis  Dwight,  secretary  of  the  Boston  Prison 
Discipline  Society,  lent  his  endorsement  to  the  proposal  to  let  the 
labor  of  prisoners  out  to  contractors.  On  the  basis  of  Wethersfield, 
said  the  committee.  Mount  Pleasant  should  be  netting  $70,000  a 
year!  And  then  the  committee  of  the  Legislature  made  a  subtle 
suggestion.  Whatever  profits  accrued  ought,  in  order  to  stifle 
criticism,  to  be  added  to  the  common  school  fund  —  an  act  that 
would  render  in  the  course  of  a  generation  the  State  prisons  a 
matter  of  trifling  necessity,  because  of  the  increased  education  of 
the  young.^^ 

The  convict-labor  storm  was  gathering  rapidly  over  the  prisons. 
To  the  Legislature  of  1834  came  petitions  from  groups  of  mechanics 
in  sixteen  counties,  stating  that  the  labor  of  the  convicts  was  being 
sold  at  reduced  prices  to  the  contractors,  and  was  thus,  by  the 

"  B.  p.  D.  S.     Vol  1,  p.  550. 

"  B.  p.  D.  S.     Vol.  1,  p.  808. 

"  B.  P.  D.  S.     1829,  p.  255. 

"  Assembly  Journal,  1833,  199,  p.  7. 

"  Op.  Cit.,  p.  13. 

"Op.  Cit.,  p.  15. 


134  History  of  American  Prisons 

ability  of  the  contractors  thus  to  undersell  in  the  open  market  the 
products  of  prison  labor,  affecting  injuriously  the  mechanical 
industry  of  the  State.^^ 

A  Legislative  committee  took  the  matter  under  consideration. 
It  reported  that  it  was  advantageous  to  the  contracor  to  be  able 
to  count  upon  a  dependable  number  of  men.  The  labor  problem 
ought  easily  to  be  self -regulative.  The  mechanics  ought  themselves 
to  bid  for  the  contracts ;  the  State  ought  to  demand  high  prices  for 
the  labor  of  the  convicts.  It  was  hard,  anyway,  to  compete  through 
convict  labor  with  the  mechanical  industry  of  the  country.  The 
State  maintained  no  monopoly.  Convicts  were  offered  to  all  bid- 
ders, and  sold  to  the  highest  bidder.  If  one  bidder  was  cleverer 
than  the  other,  that  was  no  cause  for  complaint.  Markets  were 
not  overstocked  because  of  the  output  of  prison-made  products. 
An  addition  of  1,000  convicts  a  year  would  produce  no  permanent 
effects  upon  the  prices  or  wages  in  that  market." 

Moreover,  did  the  mechanics  claim  that  convicts  should  not  be 
permitted  to  learn  industrial  trades  in  prison,  on  the  ground  that 
after  leaving  prison  such  convicts,  in  their  newly-learned  trades, 
might  be  employed  in  shops  with  honest  journeymen  and  appren- 
tices, whose  morals  they  might  corrupt?  Did  not  the  mechanics 
realize  that  discharged  convicts  must  go  somewhere?  Must  do 
something?  Think  of  the  fine  reformative  effects  of  the  industrial 
training  within  the  prison !  There  was  no  monopoly  in  prison  labor, 
if  the  different  contracts  were  let  to  the  different  persons,  who 
were  the  highest  bidders.  There  was  a  sufficient  demand  for  all 
products  represented  by  prison  labor,  and  the  limited  output  of  the 
prisons  could  not  affect  the  markets  or  wages.  The  State  must 
lessen  its  public  burdens  by  a  wise  use  of  the  convict,  who  was 
the  slave  of  the  State.  The  Auburn  system  was  now  the  model  of 
the  world,  and  no  change  ought  to  be  hazarded. 

The  arguments  of  the  Legislative  committee  contained  certain 
fallacies  which  the  mechanics  were  not  slow  in  replying  to.  The 
contract  labor  question  would  not  down,  by  the  simple  application 
of  a  Legislative  report.  The  Assembly  appointed  a  ''select  com- 
mittee," which  reported  in  1834  that  the  mechanics  had  charged 
fraud  and  favoritism  in  the  letting  of  contracts.  Convicts,  said 
the  mechanics,  should  not  be  so  employed  that  the  products  of  their 
labor  would  bear  heavily  on  any  special  trade.  They  were  confined 
in  prison  for  the  benefit  of  all  the  citizens,  and  so  they  should  be 
supported  by  the  means  of  all.  In  this  argument  the  mechanics 
were  working  toward  the  oft-proved  fact,  in  later  days,  that 
although  the  sum  total  of  prison  labor  is  but  an  infinitesimal  part 
of  the  total  labor  forces  of  the  country,  nevertheless,  when  convict 
labor  is  applied  mainly  to  specific  and  relatively  few  trades,  it 
does  produce  a  material  effect  upon  those  trades,  lowering  the 
prices  and  affecting  the  number  of  workers  in  free  labor  that  can 
find  work  in  such  trades.  In  short,  although  1,000  convicts,  work- 
ing in  a  State  where  500,000  other  persons  may  be  working,  is  a 

"  Senate  Document,  1834,  14,  p.  1. 
"Op.  Cit.,  p.  3. 


History  of  American  Prisons  135 

negligible  number,  1,000  convicts  working  at  a  trade  at  which 
only  2,000  or  5,000  or  10,000  persons  are  working  on  the  outside 
may  condition  to  a  preponderating  degree  the  market  and  the  prices 
of  the  trade  in  question. 

Moreover,  the  mechanics  in  1834  assailed  bitterly  the  theory  of 
the  reformation  of  convicts.  They  maintained  that  every  indul- 
gence to  a  convict  beyond  a  mere  wholesome  supply  of  his  natural 
wants  was  detracting  by  just  so  much  from  the  efficiency  of  his 
punishment.^*  The  supposed  feeling  of  humanity  had  degenerated 
into  a  morbid  sensibility  that  would  consult  the  interest  and  well- 
being  of  the  criminal  at  the  expense  of  the  community,  against 
whose  rights  he  had  offended. 

The  mechanics  continued  their  argument  by  asking  that  the 
effect  be  considered  that  the  example  of  punishment  under  such  an 
attitude  of  mind  would  have  on  society.  The  convict  gets  the 
idea  that  there  is  public  sympathy  for  him  outside  the  walls;  he 
believes  himself  a  martyr,  the  object  of  public  attention  and  pity. 
When  he  returns  to  society,  he  believes  himself  entitled  to  all  its 
privileges,  fit  to  associate  with  respectable  citizens,  and  with  no 
feeling  of  public  infamy  or  degradation.  Then,  if  society  rejects 
his  claim,  he  reverts  to  crime.  This  will  be  almost  inevitable,  be- 
cause no  man  who  has  been  subjected  to  infamous  punishment  as 
a  convict  can  be  expected  to  become  a  useful  citizen.  Therefore, 
the  system  is  wrong  in  so  far  as  it  is  based  on  the  theory  of 
reformation.^^ 

A  second  serious  objection,  said  the  mechanics,  was  that  honest 
citizens  would  not  associate  with  the  discharged  convict.  Men  are 
known  by  the  company  they  keep.  Two  hundred  rogues  a  year 
would  be  going  into  the  trades.  Rogues  draw  honest  men  down 
to  their  standards.  The  great  majority  of  discharged  convicts  were 
under  thirty  years  of  age.  They  would  accumulate  in  the  mechan- 
ical trades.  They  would  not  leave  the  State  for  greater  opportuni- 
ties, because  other  States  would  be  adopting  the  system  of  New 
York.  The  influx  of  discharged  convicts  into  the  mechanical  trades 
would  cause  the  journeymen  in  these  trades  to  be  regarded  with 
suspicion.  People  would  fear  to  have  discharged  convicts  in  their 
vicinity.  Masters  would,  unaware,  be  taking  discharged  convicts 
into  their  own  homes,  among  their  own  wives  and  daughters.  Other 
journeymen  would  be  quitting  the  employer  who  hired  a  discharged 
convict.  Robbers,  ravishers,  false  swearers  and  thieves  ought  not 
to  be  benefited  to  the  injury  of  those  honest  persons  who  had  a 
claim  on  the  laws  for  protection.  Rogues  are  no  legitimate  part  of 
the  community. 

Moreover,  the  prisons,  in  meeting  their  expenses  by  contract 
labor,  taxed  the  labor  and  industry  of  the  mechanics,  and  exempted 
other  classes  from  contribution,  argued  the  mechanics.  It  would  be 
more  just  to  punish  the  convict  by  idleness,  or  by  unproductive 
labor,  and  maintain  them  by  general  taxation.  The  State  sold  their 
labor  cheaply;  the  contractors  thereby  manufactured  cheaply  and 

^8  Assembly  Document,  1834,  353,  p.  3. 
^"Assembly  Document,  1834,  353,  p.  F 


136  History  of  American  Prisons 

undersold  the  honest  mechanic.    The  contractor  would  practically 
monopolize  any  particular  branch,  by  throwing  an  oversupply  into 
the   market,   which   act  would  crowd  out   all  except  those  with 
much  capital. 
f      From  the  standpoint  to-day,  the  arguments  of  the  mechanics, 
I     from  their  own  personal  standpoint,  will  be  conceded  to  be  cogent. 
1     The  ' '  reformed ' '  convict  does  go  back  into  society.    He  does  mingle 
I     with  the  ''honest"  workmen.    At  that  time,  before  the  organized 
labor  union  methods  of  identification,  it  was  hard  to  tell  whether  the 
journeyman  might  be  a  convict  or  not.    The  released  convict  did 
compete  with  free  labor.    In  the  prison,  as  we  have  already  said, 
a  relatively  slight  output  in  a  few  industries  would  disturb  the 
price  equilibrium  of  that  industry.    The  choice  of  a  few  industries 
for  convict  labor  purposes  did  unduly  compete  with  outside  pro- 
duction, and  other  industries  went  scot-free  of  such  competition. 
The  mechanics  certainly  had  a  grievance. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  State  did  not,  of  course,  want  to  give 
up  a  thing  that  was  working  so  well  from  the  administrative  stand- 
point. So  we  feel  in  the  reply  of  the  Legislative  committee  a 
distinct  side-stepping  and  an  ignoring  of  uncomfortable  truths. 
The  committee  maintained  that  the  direct  effect  of  competition  was 
not  so  great  as  had  been  stated.  It  was  said  by  the  committee  to  be 
a  mere  trifle  in  proportion  to  the  whole  manufacturing  industry  — 
which  was  true,  but  did  not  meet  the  point  of  the  special  competi- 
tion alleged  by  the  mechanics.  The  committee  said  that,  moreover, 
if  labor  was  thus  obtained  at  low  rates,  and  mechanics  were  thereby 
forced  to  work  more  cheaply,  the  community  in  general  would  be 
benefited  in  securing  both  labor  and  products  more  cheaply  — 
another  fallacious  economic  doctrine. 

Nevertheless,  the  committee  stated  that  it  felt  the  justice  of 
much  of  the  mechanics '  criticism  —  a  feeling  accelerated  no  doubt 
by  upwards  of  200,000  signatures  attached  to  the  memorials  of 
protest.  Some  modification  of  the  system  was  advisable,  no  doubt, 
-.^he  most  important  objection  was  the  teaching  of  mechanical  trades 
to  the  convicts.  Certain  branches  of  trade  ought  to  be  designated 
that  would  not  come  into  competition  with  trades  followed  in  the 
United  States  —  trades  in  which  the  mechanics  of  other  States  or  of 
foreign  countries  sent  large  quantities  of  manufactured  articles  into 
the  State  of  New  York.  Furthermore,  the  convicts  might  be 
employed  on  roads  and  other  public  works,  in  the  stone  quarries  at 
Sing  Sing,  and  in  preparing  stone  for  public  buildings  and  works. 
The  committee  went  on  to  report  that  there  was  the  possibility  of 
the  transportation  of  convicts  to  some  region  remote  from  civilized 
settlements.  Further  suggestions  were  that  those  convicted  for  a 
term  less  than  three  years  might  serve  their  sentence  in  county 
jails,  and  that  infamous  corporal  punishment  might  for  certain 
offenses  be  inflicted  instead  of  imprisonment.  The  appointment 
of  three  commissioners  was  recommended,  with  authority  to  remedy 
the  evils  and  to  report  to  the  next  Legislature,  that  of  1835,  a  plan 
of  State  prison  industries,  and  use  of  labor. 


History  of  American  Prisons  137 

We  can  readily  picture  to  ourselves  the  keen  interest  with  which 
the  makers  of  those  200,000  signatures  upon  the  petitions  of 
mechanics  against  convict  labor  awaited  the  report  of  the  Legisla- 
tive committee,  which  report  appeared  in  1835,^"  and  found  that  in 
some  articles,  and  to  some  extent,  the  complaints  of  the  mechanics 
were  well  grounded,  and  ought  to  be  relieved.  That  the  trade  was 
degraded  by  the  entrance  therein  of  convicts  the  commission  would 
not  admit,  but  it  did  hold  that  the  mechanics  were  thereby  exposed 
and  should  be  protected. 

The  crux  of  the  problem  was,  obviously,  the  question  of  finding 
some  proper  and  satisfactory  employment  for  the  convicts.  What 
could  they  do,  with  the  least  competition  with  the  petitioners  ?  The 
bodily  health  and  the  sanity  of  the  convicts  required  work.  Labor 
was  salutary,  and  diminished  crime.  Idleness  and  the  association 
of  convicts  with  each  other  was  absolutely  inadmissible,  and  would 
always  lead  to  depravity  and  vice.  Solitary  confinement  without 
labor  had  been  proved  impossible,  both  at  Auburn  and  Philadelphia. 
Transportation  was  an  expensive  failure.  Banishment  meant  turn- 
ing prisoners  loose  on  other  States,  which  would,  of  course,  retaliate. 
Employment  of  convicts  on  public  works  was  no  solution,  for  citi- 
zens (mechanics)  were  employed  thereon  as  well  as  in  mechanical 
pursuits.    The  work  was,  moreover,  temporary. 

To  the  commissioners  the  solution  lay  in  placing  limits  on  the 
number  of  convicts  employed  in  any  one  prison  industry.  Convicts 
should  be  mainly  employed  in  those  branches  supplied  chiefly  by 
importation  from  foreign  countries.  Publicity  should  be  given  to 
the  time  and  place  of  letting  contracts.  To  search  out  new  trades, 
the  commission  might  even  send  an  agent  to  Europe.  Such  trades 
being  once  established,  the  commission  believed  the  convicts  on 
discharge  would  no  longer  seek  employment  in  shops  of  citizen 
mechanics.  Convicts  having  no  regular  calling  should  be  taught 
an  occupation  in  which  they  could  start,  on  a  small  scale,  when  they 
emerged  from  prison.  The  manufacture  of  silk  was  urged  as  a 
novel  and  profitable  industry. 

It  is  not  hard  to  see  that  the  commissioners  made  a  poor  figure 
both  in  their  report  and  in  their  recommendations.  Intentionally 
or  not,  they  failed  to  weigh  justly  the  obvious  grievances  of  the 
mechanics,  who  were  getting  more  and  more  pinched  by  the  com- 
petition of  the  prisons.  More  petitions  had  been  presented  to  the 
Legislature  on  the  subject  of  contract  labor  than  had  ever  before 
been  presented  on  any  subject.^^  ^o  doubt,  the  Senator  and  the 
Assemblyman  of  that  day  lived  politically  with  his  ear  as  close 
to  the  ground  as  at  present.  And  he  heard  about  a  public  conven- 
tion of  mechanics,  attended  by  99  delegates  from  sixteen  counties, 
held  at  Utica  on  August  20-21,  1834,  to  protest  against  the  *'war 
of  the  State  upon  the  property  and  the  rights  of  the  honest  and 
industrious  mechanics, ' '  as  the  Geneva  mechanics  put  it.^^     Auburn 

^  Assembly  Document,  1835,  p.  135. 

21  Assembly  Document,  1840,  276,  p.  5. 

22  Assembly  Document,  1834,  352. 


138  History  of  American  Prisons 

mechanics  inveighed  against  the  favoritism  manifest  in  letting  and 
reletting  the  contracts  of  the  prison.  Albany  mechanics  showed 
that  100  dozen  large  combs,  that  cost  $58  to  make  in  Albany,  cost 
only  $15.50  in  the  prisons.  The  New  York  city  coopers  represented 
that  nearly  as  many  coopers  were  employed  at  Mount  Pleasant  as 
in  New  York  itself. 

More  and  more  it  seemed  apparent  that  the  mechanics  had  the 
facts,  and  the  commissions  of  the  Legislature  had  the  defensive 
theories. 

** Would  men  of  wealth  (asked  the  mechanics'  convention ),^^  like  to  have 
Ihe  ex-convict,  on  his  return  to  society,  mingle  in  the  drawing  room  with 
their  sons,  and  their  daughters?  And  perchance  improve  his  condition  by 
marriage  with  an  heiress  of  their  fortunes?  Would  the  lawyer,  the  divine, 
the  merchant,  desire  this  close  association  that  would  be  forced  upon  the 
lionest  mechanic?  An  affirmative  answer  to  such  questions  would  be  revolting 
to  the  moral  sense  of  the  community. ' '  ^ 

And  so  the  convention  resolved  that,  should  their  petitions  fail, 
they  would  cause  the  ballot  boxes  to  speak  a  language  that  would 
not  be  misunderstood.  They  would  form  associations  in  each 
county,  and  also  hold  annual  meetings  of  protest  and  propaganda. 
The  ''Mechanics'  Magazine,"  a  trade  journal,  pledged  itself  never 
to  abandon  the  cause  of  doing  away  with  the  State  prison  monoply. 
One  hundred  thousand  copies  of  the  proceedings  of  the  convention 
were  printed.^'* 

So  strong  was  the  pressure  on  the  Legislature  of  1835  that  a  law 
was  enacted  which  promised  material  alleviation  to  the  mechanics, 
and  which  we  summarize: 

No  mechanical  trade  should  hereafter  be  taught  to  convicts,  except  for 
the  making  of  articles  chiefly  imported  from  abroad.  Artisans  might  be 
vemployed  from  abroad  as  teachers. 

No  contract  for  a  longer  period  than  six  months  should  be  made  by  the 
warden,  without  the  consent  of  the  prison  inspectors.  Due  public  notice 
should  be  given  of  contracts  soon  to  be  let.  No  contracts  should  be  made 
for  a  period  of  more  than  five  years. 

In  branches  of  industry  supplied  chiefly  by  domestic  labor  (as  contrasted 
with  foreign  products)  the  number  of  convicts  to  be  employed  should  be 
limited  to  the  number  of  convicts  who  had  learned  a  trade  before  coming 
to  the  prison. 

Existing  contracts  should  be  fulfilled,  but  contractors  should  be  urged,  if 
possible,  to  abandon  them. 

The  silk  industry  (growing  and  weaving)  should  be  introduced. 

We  have  italicized  the  words  in  the  third  paragraph  above: 
*'who  had  learned  a  trade  before  coming  to  the  prison,"  because 
this  clause  proved  in  practice  to  be  a  peculiarly  useful  and  bare- 
faced ''joker"  for  the  prison  authorities  during  the  next  half 
decade.  While  the  intent  of  the  law  was  probably  to  limit  the 
number  of  convicts  in  any  trade  in  prison  only  to  those  who  already 
had  practiced  that  trade,  the  wardens  of  Auburn  and  Sing  Sing 
prisons  read  the  law  literally,  and  turned  into  trades  all  those  who 
claimed  to  have  followed  any  trade  before  coming  to  prison. 

28  Proceedings  of  the  State  Convention  of  Mechanics,  1834,  p.  6. 

24  Assembly  Document.  1840,  276,  p.  6.  .    „    ^     ,    ,  ,,         ,  ^ 

25  State  Convention  of  Mechanics.     New  York  Mechanics'  Magazine,  p.  6. 


History  of  American  Prisons  139 

The  silk  industry  never  proved  popular  or  feasible.  A  few  mul- 
berry trees  were  planted,  but  the  prison  industries  went  diligently 
on.  The  wardens  were  unable  to  persuade  the  contractors  to  give 
up  their  lucrative  contracts.  Warden  Levi  Lewis  of  Auburn  felt 
a  great  pity  for  the  contractors,  who  had  gone  into  the  business  with, 
reluctance,  as  an  experiment,  and  had  taught  the  business  to  the 
convicts.^^  Why  should  the  contractors  now  suffer  unfairly  and 
unjustly  through  general  public  letting  of  contracts?  Moreover, 
while  such  competition  might  bring  higher  bids,  the  warden  also 
worried  lest  some  contractors  might  bid  more  than  they  could  afford, 
thus  bringing  on  a  subsequent  failure.  If  such  contractors  were 
prosecuted,  they  would  appeal  to  the  sympathy  of  the  Legislature- 
Any  litigation  in  such  an  event  would  seriously  demoralize  the 
steady  industrial  activity  of  the  inmates. 

On  their  part,  the  mechanics  had  not  come  forward  with  any 
clear-cut  proposals  as  to  substitutes  for  the  present  system.^^  They 
knew  that  they  were  detrimentally  affected  by  the  system,  but  they 
could  not  bring  forward  any  counter-proposals  that  would  match 
up  in  attractiveness  to  the  present  conditions  of  industrial  activity 
within  the  prisons.  They  talked  vaguely  about  solitary  confinement 
without  labor,  or  transportation,  both  manifestly  impossible,  and 
both  involving  the  expenditure  by  the  State  of  considetable  sums 
without  any  economic  return.  Furthermore,  both  transportation 
and  imprisonment  without  labor  had  an  unsavory  history  that 
could  be  adduced  against  them.  The  petitioners  should  remember, 
said  one  committee  of  the  Legislature,  that  while  they,  the  mechan- 
ics in  certain  trades  were  complaining,  most  of  the  citizens  were 
not  at  all  worried  about  the  situation. 

So  the  arguments  were  tossed  heatedly  back  and  forth.  Stress 
continued  to  be  laid  by  the  mechanics  on  the  inadequacy  of  the 
prison  punishments.  A  legislator,  friendly  to  the  cause  of  the 
mechanics,  stated  in  a  minority  report  in  1835  that  a  detention  in 
prison  was  hardly  dreaded  any  longer,  and  that  there  were  many 
honest  mechanics  who  would  be  willing  to  exchange  positions  with 
the  convicts. 

We  might  parenthetically  remark  that  the  same  argument  has 
been  one  of  the  stock  phrases  of  those  who  in  these  more  modern 
times  find  fault  with  lenient  and  so-called  progressive  prison  admin- 
istration, but  we  have  yet  to  find  any  earnest  effort  of  the  so-called 
honest  workman  to  make  his  way  into  prison.  Many  a  workman 
who  has  suddenly  been  discovered  to  be  dishonest  has  found  his 
way  there,  but  the  universal  experience  has  been  that  he  desires  ta 
have  his  prison  term  cut  just  as  short  as  possible. 

The  minority  njember  whom  we  have  mentioned  above  had  to 
suggest,  however,  as  substitutes  for  the  obviously  lucrative  contract 
system  only  the  theoretical  proposition  of  transportation  to  some 
remote  part  of  the  world,  or  the  discredited  solitary  confinement 

2«  Assembly  Document,  1835,  135,  pp.  27-28. 
s'Op.  Cit.,  p.  330. 


140 


History  op  American  Prisons 


without  labor.  And  so  the  contract  system  went  on,  practically- 
unimpeded  by  the  new  law,  and  in  defiance  of  the  mechanics.  Some 
of  the  chief  contracts  in  operation  were  the  following : 

Mt.  Pleasant  Prison 


Nature  of  Contract 


No.    of 
convicts 


Date 
made 


No.  of  yrs. 

of 
contract 


Contract 

price 
per  man 
per   day 


Copper  nail  boots  and  cap  fronts 

Boots  and  shoes 

Coopers 

Locksmiths 

Saddlery,  etc 

Tailoring 

Blacksmith  and  locksmith 

Hat  finishing 


50  to  100 
80 
150 
30 
40 


30 


1833 
1833 
1832 
1833 
1833 
1833 
1833 
1833 


$.35 
.35 
Piece  price 
Piece  price 
.37>^ 
■  SIH 
.40 
.40 


Auburn  Prison 


Nature  of  Contract 


No.    of 

Date   of 

Duration 

convicts 

contract 

of 
contract 

50 

1832 

3 

45 

1829 

10 

All  in  that 

trade 

1832 

3 

85 

1827 

10 

35 

1833 

6 

15  to  25 

1833 

1 

Contract 

price 
per  man 
per  day 


Coopering 

Carpenters'  and  joiners'  tools 

Boots  and  shoes 

Weaving  cotton  bed  ticking .  . 

Tailoring 

Brass  clocks 


S.28 
.30 

Piece  price 
.25  or  .15 

Piece  price 
.20  to  .30 


For  several  years,  from  1835  until  1840,  there  was  a  lull  in  the 
controversy.  For  a  time,  the  new  law  was  apparently  given  a 
chance  to  work.  But  in  March,  1840,  there  came  a  strong  recru- 
descence of  the  mechanics'  campaign.  A  public  meeting  **in  the 
matter  of  teaching  mechanical  trades  to  State  prison  convicts ' '  was 
held  in  New  York  city.  Again  the  old  and  well-grounded  argu- 
ments of  opposition  were  advanced.  The  bill  of  1835,  it  was 
claimed,  was  passed  to  blind  the  eyes  of  the  mechanics.^^  The 
chief  aim  of  the  State  was  to  make  as  much  money  as  possible. 
All  talk  of  convicts  being  reformed  through  learning  trades  was  a 
pretence.  In  reality,  the  system  had  utterly  failed  to  produce 
reform.  That  the  arguments  of  the  mechanics  were  based  on 
sporadic  statements  of  well-known  persons,  and  not  on  any  careful 
statistical  proof,  made  the  facts  seem  no  less  strong  or  convincing 
to  the  mechanics. 

Had  the  law  of  1835  been  made  a  joke?  Most  decidedly!  Did 
not  Mr.  Wiltse,  the  warden  of  Mount  Pleasant,  report  in  1840  that 
in  the  last  two  years  the  prison  had  made  $111,773  over  all  ex- 
penses ?  ' '  A  more  unequal,  unjust  and  destructive  system  could  not 
have   been  devised,   nor  could  more   disreputable   and   dishonest 


Assembly  Document,  1840,  276,  p.  6. 


History  of  American  Prisons 


141 


means  have  been  construed  to  perpetuate  it,"  said  the  mechanics. 
The  meeting  again  urged  solitary  confinement,  but  this  time  with 
labor.  The  Philadelphia  system  was  warmly  endorsed.  The 
Auburn  and  Mount  Pleasant  prisons  should  be  built  over  by  the 
labor  convicts  to  provide  large  cells  for  solitary  labor.  Many  of 
the  present  contracts  made  since  1835,  were  probably  illegal. 

The  customary  senate  Legislative  committee  made  its  report. 
The  mulberry  trees  had  not  flourished  and  were  not  favored  at 
Auburn.  The  committee  praised  Captain  Lynds  (who  was  now 
for  the  second  time  warden  of  Auburn),  and  the  inspectors  for 
their  efficiency  in  letting  contracts  on  favorable  terms,  as  shown 
by  the  following  comparative  statement: 


Trades 

Former 

rates 
per  day 

New 

rates 

per   day 

Trades 

Former 

rates 
per  day 

New 

rates 

per   day 

36H 
32 
24 
32 
18 
319-10 

37^ 

52 

32 

35 

20 

35 

Shoe 

31M 
32  7-10 
35 
30 
44 

40 

TaUor 

Cabinet 

42 

Carpet 

371^ 
371^ 
50 

Comb 

Tool..;:::"::: 

Stone 

At  Mount  Pleasant  Prison,  of  767  convicts,  543  were  working  in 
nearly  a  dozen  different  contract  occupations.^^  Mr.  Wiltse  frankly 
acknowledged  his  interpretation  of  the  law  of  1835  to  be  that  he 
<jould  put  a  convict,  who  professed  a  trade,  at  any  trade  within 
the  prison.  If  the  mechanics  should  gain  the  day  and  abolish 
•contract  labor  in  Auburn  and  Mount  Pleasant,  the  annual  appro- 
priations by  the  State  would  have  to  be  not  less  than  $120,000. 

Senator  Henry  Livingston  of  this  same  committee  made  a  minor- 
ity report,  stating  that  the  law  of  1835  was  almost  wholly  useless 
as  a  relief  to  the  honest  mechanics.^*^  The  revenue  to  be  obtained 
from  convict  labor  was  the  primary  consideration,  and  led  to  **the 
grossest  irregularity  and  the  most  revolting  inhumanity  in  the 
government  of  the  prison."®^  There  was  under  Captain  Lynds 
at  Auburn  a  want  of  humanity  in  the  treatment  of  convicts 
suspected  of  insanity.  It  was  generally  assumed  that  such  convicts 
were  feigning,  even  in  the  absence  of  all  possible  motive.  Lynds 
had  told  several  of  his  keepers  that  six  blows  with  a  cat  were  simply 
an  aggravation;  that  he  must  have  keepers  who  could  not  count 
six !  For  a  trifling  offense  a  convict  had  been  stripped  naked  and 
whipped  from  50  to  500  blows  —  the  said  convict  being  also  subject 
to  fits !  ^  The  treatment  of  deranged  convicts  was  revolting, 
beatings  continuing  until  the  body  of  the  insane  inmate  was  cut 
from  shoulder  to  heels.  And  no  record  of  this  punishment  had 
been  entered  on  the  prison  books ! 

But  Mr.  Livingston,  in  his  turn,  did  not  give  constructive  sug- 
gestions as  to  how  contract  labor  might  be  reasonably  abolished. 


2»  New  York  Senate  Document,  1840,  37,  p.  48. 

"oOp.  Cit.,  p.  7. 

«i  Senate  Document,  1840,  37,  p.  5. 

82  Op.  Cit,  p.  9. 


142  History  of  American  Prisons 

He  did  recommend  the  wholesale  removal  of  the  present  brutal 
officers.  And,  in  truth,  Captain  Lynds  and  Mr.  Wiltse  both  severed 
their  connections  in  this  year  with  Auburn  and  Mount  Pleasant 
respectively. 

A  committee  of  the  Assembly  in  1840  was  cheerfully  frank  in 
recognizing  the  injustices  of  contract  labor  to  the  mechanics.  The 
law  of  1835  was  being  evaded  in  that  while  the  entire  trade  was- 
no  longer  being  taught  to  novices,  piece  work  had  been  developed^ 
and,  for  instance,  twelve  different  processes  in  making  barrels  were 
now  carried  on,  each  process  attended  to  by  a  different  convict. 
Not  one  of  these  convicts  was  alleged  to  become  a  cooper  or  to  learn 
a  trade.^  The  committee  declared  that  the  whole  system  of  the 
letting-out  of  contracts  should  be  abandoned  as  soon  as  it  could  be 
legally  done.  But  beyond  recommending  also  that  stone-cutting 
for  the  State  be  the  principal  occupation  at  Mount  Pleasant,  the 
report  was  not  constructive. 

The  subsequent  report  of  the  Legislative  committee  of  the  Assem- 
bly, for  1841,*^*  must  have  been  highly  exasperating  to  the 
mechanics.  Based  upon  an  a  priori  opinion  and  dogmatic  asser- 
tions, and  devoid  of  impartial  or  statistical  study,  it  was  a  thorough, 
whitewash  of  the  prevailing  prison  methods.  The  alleged  competi- 
tion between  the  regular  mechanic  and  the  prison  convict  was  said 
to  be  essentially  without  foundation.  The  amount  of  convict  labor 
was  comparatively  trifling,  and  the  quality  inferior.  Not  so  many 
convicts  were  thus  employed  as  was  commonly  supposed.  No 
satisfactory  reason  had  as  yet  been  brought  forward  why  the 
present  system  should  be  discontinued.  Convicts  were  not  taught 
a  full  trade,  anyway,  but  only  a  part  of  a  trade.  Mechanics  could 
not  be  degraded  by  association  with  convicts.  To  grant  the 
mechanics'  petition  for  abolition  of  contract  labor  would  mean 
enormous  expense  accruing  to  the  State.  And  so  forth ;  the  repeti- 
tion of  the  now  time-worn  arguments. 

An  Assemblyman,  George  Weir  of  New  York,  had  introduced  a 
bilP^  (which  was  referred  to  this  committee)  providing  that  no 
contract  should  hereafter  be  made  for  the  labor  of  prisoners ;  that 
no  mechanical  trade  or  business  should  be  thereafter  taught  to 
prisoners,  and  that  no  machinery  should  thereafter  be  used  that 
was  driven  by  horse,  steam  or  water  power.  Solitary  confinement 
without  labor  should  prevail.  These  propositions  the  committee 
bluntly  disapproved,  on  the  basis  of  the  arguments  of  previous 
years.  But  the  committee  went  further,  and  announced  that  there 
had  been  no  evasion  of  the  law  of  1835.  Everything  was  alleged  to 
be  serene  in  the  prisons,  and  even  the  prisoners  were  said  to  approve 
of  the  system  of  discipline  and  labor.  The  committee  turned  down 
as  entirely  impracticable  a  suggestion  that  prisoners  might  be  paid 
a  portion  of  their  earnings,  the  same  to  go  to  their  families.^  Such 
an  innovation  would  involve  complicated  bookkeeping,  would  inter- 
fere with  discipline,  and  besides  exciting  jealousy  and  strife  would 

83  Assembly  Document  339,  1840,  p.  8. 
3*  Assembly  Document  (1841),  186. 
86  Op.  Cit.,  p.  14. 
s«  Op.  Cit.,  p.  28. 


History  of  American  Prisons  143 

introduce  deception  and  fraud,  and  be  also  unprofitable  to  the 
State.  ''But  we  shall  not  dwell  further  on  the  subject/'  said  the 
committee,  in  abruptly  dismissing  the  subject,  thus  ending  in  a 
wholesale  fashion  the  very  suggestion  which  in  a  measure  would 
have  solved  some  of  the  problems  of  prison  discipline.  In  these 
more  modern  times,  one  of  the  chief  arguments  for  the  perpetua- 
tion of  the  contract  system  in  those  States  where  it  still  exists,  is, 
that  it  does  give  the  prisoner  a  chance  to  earn  by  overtime  work 
something  to  be  sent  to  his  dependents  outside  the  prison  walls. 

In  this  same  year,  1841,  the  mechanics  met  again  in  an  indignant  > 
State  convention  at  Albany  on  September  1st  with  Assemblyman 
Weir  in  the  chair.  The  mechanics  still  refused  to  formulate  an 
alternative  plan,  claiming  that  that  was  the  Legislature's  business. 
In  truth,  the  mechanics  were  in  difficulty.  They  could  not  convinc- 
ingly argue  that  industrial  education  was  harmful  to  the  convict; 
they  could  not  convincingly  assert  that  compulsory  and  solitary 
idleness  would  be  beneficial  to  the  convict  —  and  in  refusing  to 
offer  a  substitute  plan  for  the  lucrative  convict  labor  system,  they 
clearly  side-stepped  a  responsibility  that  was  at  least  partly  theirs. 
In  short,  they  wanted  all  competition  abolished,  and  did  not  care>^ 
primarily  what  happened  to  the  convicts  or  to  the  State. 

So  the  mechanics  had  to  argue  that  the  convicts  should  not  be 
taught  trades,  because  the  very  filling  of  those  trades  by  discharged 
convicts  would  make  it  harder  and  harder  for  them  to  obtain 
employment  in  the  said  trades.^'^  Stress  was  laid  on  the  non-reform- 
ative nature  of  the  present  prison  system,  said  to  be  proved  by  the 
fact  that  one-third  of  those  convicts  admitted  to  the  prison  had 
trades.  The  educated  convict  was,  therefore,  more  dangerous  to 
society  than  the  untaught  convict !  The  mechanics  ridiculed  the 
''State  Universities  of  Sing  Sing  and  of  Auburn."  Had  not  the 
alleged  reformers,  anyway,  abandoned  the  reform  principle  in 
abandoning  the  complete  teaching  of  a  trade,  and  in  substituting  a 
single  operation  for  each  laboring  convict?  Again  the  mechanics 
threatened  to  use  their  votes,  representing  one-fourth  of  the  total 
population  of  the  State,  to  defeat  the  chief  executive  and  the  hostile 
Legislature. 

And,  in  truth,  the  mechanics  had  their  legislative  inning  in  1842, 
for  Mr.  Weir  was  in  this  year  appointed  the  chairman  of  the 
Assembly's  committee  on  State  prisons.  The  report  of  that  com- 
mittee arraigned  most  unmercifully  the  contract  labor  system  that 
had  been  so  laboriously  whitewashed  by  the  same  committee  the 
year  before.  The  possibility  of  making  the  prison  an  agent  of 
industrial  reformation  was  denied.®® 

*'To  look  for  a  decrease  of  crime  until  governments  shall  cease  the  system 
of  benefitting  the  few  by  the  plunder  and  deprivations  of  the  many  is 
impossible. ' ' 

High  crimes  were  said  by  the  report  to  be  incited  not  by  the 
poor  but  by  the  rich,  the  "moneyed  rogues."     One  of  the  chief 

3"^  Proceedings  of  the  State  Convention  of  Mechanics,  1841,  p.  8. 
88  Assembly  Document  (1842),  65,  p.  3. 


^ 

\ 

^ 

-^ 


144  History  of  American  Prisons 

causes  of  crime  was  alleged  to  be  the  dishonesty  of  the  banking 
system,  and  the  explosion  of  banks  from  one  end  of  the  country  to 
the  other. 

Silence,  said  this  insurgent  prison  committee,  contained  no 
reformative  principle;  it  contributed  to  discipline,  and  it  swelled 
the  quantity  of  production  to  the  contractor.  Reformation  must 
take  place  not  inside  but  outside  the  prison,  through  favorable 
circumstances,  steady  employment,  good  wages,  and  the  enjoy- 
ment, by  those  who  labor,  of  equal  station  with  respectable  men. 
Teaching  trades  in  prison  was  like  dipping  out  the  ocean  with  a 
bucket.  Moreover,  the  committee  failed  to  find  that  the  articles 
of  confederation  of  the  State  afforded  privileges  to  criminals ;  there 
was  no  specification  contained  therein  that  they  should  be  instructed 
in  agriculture  or  the  mechanic  arts.  Criminals  had  sacrificed  all 
the  advantages  of  citizenship ;  they  were  placed  in  prison  for 
punishment ;  they  should  be  supported  not  by  competing  with  the 
honest  mechanics,  but  by  a  general  tax.  The  agents  (wardens)  of 
Mount  Pleasant  and  of  Auburn  were  found  by  the  committee  to 
have  broken  high-handedly  the  laws  themselves  in  perpetuating 
and  renewing  contracts. 

But  when  it  came  to  putting  forward  a  constructive  substitute 
for  the  existing  conditions,  the  committee,  despite  its  bitter  dia- 
tribe, and  despite  the  general  arraignment  of  the  prisons,  offered 
relatively  moderate  recommendations.  Convicts  should  be  em- 
ployed so  far  as  practicable  in  the  manufacture  of  articles  necessary 
for  their  own  consumption,  and  for  the  inmates  of  the  State 
Lunatic  Asylum  at  Utica.  The  quarrying  at  Mount  Pleasant  Prison 
should  be  carried  on  more  extensively.  Silk  should  continue  to  be 
manufactured  at  Auburn.  And  the  State  should,  if  possible,  go 
into  the  business  of  mining  and  smelting  of  metal  ores. 

There  are  two  phases  of  the  above-mentioned  report  that  should 
be  noted  in  their  relation  to  modern  prison  methods.  The  commit- 
tee disparaged  the  prison  as  a  reformative  agent,  and  by  indirection 
placed  the  chief  field  of  reformation  in  society  itself.  The 
committee,  turning  the  attention  of  the  Legislature  from  a  consider- 
ation of  prisons  to  society  itself,  urged  better  living  conditions, 
the  square  deal  for  labor,  and  steady  employment.  There  was  in 
the  committee's  report  the  suggestion  of  the  palliative  results  of 
prison  methods. 

To-day  the  old  adage  that  an  ounce  of  prevention  is  worth  a 
pound  of  cure  is  so  generally  accepted  in  the  correctional  treatment 
of  crime  and  delinquency  that  it  hardly  needs  to  be  stressed  here. 
The  prison  is  recognized  as  the  last  institution  in  the  series  of 
corrective  and  reformative  efforts  of  society  to  deal  with  the  delin- 
quent. The  further  back  toward  childhood  and  early  adolescence 
one  goes  to-day  in  the  treatment  of  delinquency,  the  more  popular, 
and  also  the  more  efficacious,  is  the  treatment.  Moreover,  it  m 
quite  as  generally  recognized,  also,  that  the  general  improvement  of 
industrial  and  social  conditions  has  a  fundamental  relation  to 
crime  and  delinquency  and  that  it  is  far  better  to  improve  a  com- 


History  of  American  Prisons  145 

munity  than  it  is  to  improve  a  prison.  But  it  is  also  recognized 
that  we  still  have  prisons  with  us,  and  that  a  part  of  the  imprison- 
ment of  industrial  and  social  conditions  of  society  relates  specific- 
ally to  the  improvement  of  prisons,  for  prisons  are  one  of  the  still 
necessary  institutions  of  society. 

The  second  noteworthy  point  in  the  report  of  the  above-mentioned 
committee  was  the  suggestion  that  to  the  largest  extent  possible 
the  inmates  produce  the  articles  that  they  themselves  could  con- 
sume, and  that  could  be  consumed  by  the  State  Lunatic  Asylum 
at  Utica.  Herein  we  find  an  early  suggestion  of  the  prison  labor 
system  that  later  was  developed  to  a  greater  extent  in  New  York 
than  in  any  other  State,  namely,  the  ** State-Use  System,'*  the 
basic  principle  of  which  is  the  prohibition  of  the  sale  of  prison-made 
goods  in  any  open  market,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  manufacture 
by  the  prisons  of  goods  for  the  use  of  the  institutions  and  depart- 
ments of  the  State  and  its  political  divisions,  such  as  the  counties, 
the  cities  and  the  villages.  In  short,  the  theory  of  the  State-use 
system  is  that  there  should  be,  by  the  prisons,  the  least  possible 
competition  by  prison  labor  with  free  labor  and  that  therefore  no 
industries  should  be  carried  on  in  the  prison  for  the  supplying  of 
the  open  market  in  the  State  in  which  the  prison  is  located,  or 
any  other  State.  But,  since  the  State  seeks  thus  to  minimize  any 
competition  of  prison  labor  with  free  labor,  organized  labor  must 
recognize  on  the  other  hand  that  the  State  and  its  political  divisions 
furnish  themselves  a  market  which  free  labor  can  supply,  but  which 
to  the  greatest  possible  extent  must  in  fairness  be  left  for  prison 
labor  to  supply,  since  prisoners  must  labor,  for  obvious  reasons, 
and  there  must  be  somewhere  an  outlet  for  their  product. 

The  State-use  system  is  not,  to-day,  a  popular  system  in  the 
States  of  the  Union.  Only  New  York  and  New  Jersey,  Ohio  and 
Illinois  have  adopted  the  system,  wholly  or  in  large  part.  The 
system  is  not  yet  concomitant  with  self-support  of  prisons  through 
the  labor  of  prisoners.  New  York  State  has  yearly  deficits  of  large 
amounts  for  the  maintenance  of  its  prisons,  and  no  method  by  the 
State-use  system  has  yet  been  put  into  practice  that  has  even 
approached  a  solution  of  the  problem  of  maintenance  of  prisons 
by  the  labor  of  the  inmates.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  left, 
through  the  State-use  system,  a  considerable  part  of  the  day  for 
the  academic  and  vocational  education  of  the  inmates,  and  for  their 
recreation. 

Turning  our  attention  again  to  the  report  of  the  Assembly 
committee  of  1842,  we  find  in  the  same  Legislature  the  mechanics 
winning  a  partial  victory,  because  a  law  was  passed  providing  that 
convicts  should  work  in  prison  at  trades  already  learned  by  them  — 
and  not  at  new  trades.  Any  contracts  made  in  violation  of  the 
law  of  1835  were  to  be  annulled.  A  commissioner.  Ransom  Cook, 
was  appointed  by  this  same  law  to  examine  lands  in  relation  to 
possible  mining  or  smelting  operations. 


146  History  of  American  Prisons 

In  short,  out  of  the  agitation  of  the  mechanics  throughout  a 
decade,  there  had  come,  not  the  abolition  of  prison  labor,  but  its 
restriction,  and  the  movement  also  to  found  a  new  State  prison  in 
New  York,  where  mining  and  smelting  should  be  the  chief  industry. 
Within  a  year,  in  1843,  the  annual  earnings  of  Auburn  Prison 
had  fallen  off  from  $57,722  to  $49,652.  The  prison  was  earning 
$1,000  a  month  less  than  in  the  previous  year.  Unless  the  existing 
contracts  were  legalized,  an  appropriation  of  approximately 
$25,000  would  have  to  be  asked  for,  in  order  to  carry  out  the  law 
of  1842. 

In  1844  a  new  State  prison  was  established  by  law,  to  be  located 
north  of  a  line  drawn  east  and  west  of  the  city  of  Albany.  Only 
the  manufacture  of  iron  should  be  undertaken  in  this  prison.  No 
contracts  should  be  made  by  this  prison  for  the  labor  of  prisoners. 
So  far  as  practicable,  the  prison  should  be  built  by  the  labor  of 
prisoners. 


CHAPTER  XIII 


OTHER  EARLY  PRISONS  IN  NEW  ENGLAND 

MAINE 

The  State  prison  of  Maine  contributed  nothing  to  the  early  prison 
movement  except  a  ''horrible  example."  The  prison  was  estab- 
lished at  Thomaston,  80  miles  northeast  of  Portland,  in  1823,  three 
years  after  Maine  had  been  set  apart  from  Massachusetts  as  a 
separate  State.  Prior  to  that,  convicts  from  this  section  of  New 
England  had  been  sent,  often  at  great  expense,  and  with  consider- 
able difficulty  of  transportation,  to  the  Massachusetts  State  Prison 
at  Charlestown. 

The  prison  at  Thomaston  was  the  second  in  the  United  States 
to  be  built  on  the  Auburn  plan.  It  was  located  at  the  side  of  a 
supposedly  inexhaustible  quarry.^  The  48  cells,  later  increased  ta 
71,  were  literally  pits,  set  back  to  back,  designed  for  solitary 
confinement.  They  were  but  one  story  high,  and  sunk  below  the 
surface  of  the  ground.^  They  had  no  doors  or  passageway,  and 
were  entered  from  the  top  through  an  aperture  two  feet  square, 
secured  by  an  iron  grating. 

A  more  gruesome  and  unhealthy  prison  abode  could  hardly  be 
imagined.  By  means  of  a  ladder  the  convicts  descended  into  these 
** rooms  of  indescribable  gloom."  The  ladder  was  then  withdrawn. 
The  cells  were  8  feet  9  inches  long,  4  feet  6  inches  wide,  and  9  feet 
8  inches  high.  A  small  orifice,  8  inches  long  by  1%  inches  wide,, 
built  on  a  slant,  admitted  air  but  practically  no  light.  The  cells, 
supposed  to  be  heated  from  a  flue  in  the  floor,  were  so  desperately 
cold  that  in  the  formidable  Maine  winters  not  infrequently  two 
prisoners  would  be  placed  in  a  cell  together  to  keep  each  other 
warm.  In  the  winter  the  prisoners  had  to  stay  in  bed  constantly 
from  sunset  to  sunrise  to  keep  warm,  a  process  vicious  and  debili- 
tating to  mind  and  body.  There  were  no  lights  in  the  cells.*  The 
governor  of  Maine,  pleading  in  1839  for  a  modern  prison  building, 
stated  that  the  then  existing  prison  building  at  Thomaston  seemed 
to  have  been  constructed  with  a  view  of  inflicting  the  greatest 
punishment  in  the  shortest  time  and  at  the  least  expense. 

To  these  terrible  cells  the  courts,  from  1823  to  1827,  when  the 
law  was  amended,  sentenced  convicts  with  the  provision  that  all  or 
a  portion  of  the  sentence  should  be  spent  in  solitary  confinement 
without  labor,  and  on  bread  and  water.  This  accumulation  of 
barbarous  penalties  brought  speedily  its  inevitable  horrors.  One 
man,  sentenced  to  70  days,  hung  himself  after  four  days;  another 
man,  condemned  to  60  days,  committed  suicide  after  24  days.^ 

1  Crawford.     App.,  p.  88,  from  whom  the  details  of  following  description. 
27, 


2  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1827,  p.  98. 

♦Crawford. 

'  Crawford,  p 


[147] 


148  History  of  American  Prisons 

Many  prisoners  had  to  be  repeatedly  taken  from  solitary  confine- 
ment to  the  hospital  in  order  to  be  restored  to  a  condition  that 
would  permit  them  to  be  again  returned  to  the  same  torture ! 

The  prisoners  were  placed  in  their  cells  one  hour  before  night 
each  week  day.  They  remained  in  their  cells  all  day  on  the  Sabbath, 
except,  for  one  and  one-half  hours.^ 

Insanity  and  disease  were  the  inevitable  corollaries  of  this  treat- 
ment, which  itseK  seems  to  have  been  the  echo  of  the  campaign 
in  New  York  and  Pennsylvania  in  the  twenties.  With  the  abandon- 
ment of  solitary  con&iement  in  Maine  in  1827  ^  under  such 
conditions,  it  was  still  reserved  for  punishment  of  infractions  within 
the  prison.  These  terrible  conditions  were  used  as  material  by  the 
Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society  in  its  campaigns  against  solitary 
confinement  without  labor. 

Stone-cutting  was  the  main  occupation  at  this  prison.  There 
were  also  blacksmiths,  wagon-makers,  joiners,  shoemakers,  and 
tailors.®  The  few  women  convicts  worked  in  the  washhouse  under 
a  matron.  There  was  little  difficulty  in  disposing  of  the  manufac- 
tured articles,  which  were  manufactured  and  sold  by  the  prison, 
no  contractors  being  employed. 

The  pits  were  the  worst  part  of  the  prison  life.  The  necessity 
of  placing  at  times  two  men  in  a  cell  broke  the  rigors  of  the  undi- 
luted Auburn  system.  Discipline  was  consequently  lax.  Friends 
might  visit  the  convicts.  To  this  was  added  the  almost  inevitably 
demoralizing  feature  of  those  prisons  in  which  salaries  were  small. 
There  were  frequent  cases  of  untrustworthiness  of  the  guards, 
who,  receiving  less  than  $200  a  year,  were  generally  unfit  to  be 
placed  in  authority  over  others.  Liquor  and  cards  found  their 
way  to  the  prisoners. 

The  following  salaries  were  paid  in  1827 : 

Warden  $700  Chaplain  $100 

Keeper 200  Inspectors    206 

Clerk   200  and  $91  to  each  of  the  officers  for 

Overseer   180  board."" 

Physician    100 

The  prison  was  a  constant  expense  to  the  State,  although  annual 
financial  statements  often  showed  apparent  earnings  over  expenses 
from  the  labor  of  convicts,  who  received  no  "overstint"  compensa- 
tion, but  only  a  suit  of  clothes  and  from  $2  to  $5  when  discharged. 
The  governor  stated  in  1837  that  the  prison  had  cost  the  State  since 
1823  a  total  of  $123,489  (mainly,  however,  for  buildings),  in 
addition  to  the  sums  arising  from  the  labor  of  convicts.^ 

It  is  a  striking  thing  that,  despite  the  pits,  the  health  record 
was  regarded  as  good.  The  average  death  rate  was  not  over  two 
per  cent.  Women  and  children  were  not  sent  to  this  prison,  but 
to  county  jails,^  until  in  1830  a  separate  building  was  built  for  the 
women. 

3  Crawford.  App. 
B  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1827,  p.  89. 
8B.  P.  D.  S.,  1831,  p.  612. 
8  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1827,  p.  101. 
»B.  P.  D.  S.,  1837,  p.  121. 
10  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1827,  p.  98. 


History  of  American  Prisons  149 

After  having  considered  in  1836  the  possibility  of  relocating  the 
State  prison  at  Hallo  well,  just  south  of  Augusta,  the  Legislature 
decided  in  1839  on  a  reconstruction  of  the  prison  at  Thomaston. 
The  Auburn  plan  for  the  prison  had  been  advocated  by  a  legislative 
commission,  in  preference  to  the  Pennsylvania  plan,  on  the  ground 
that  it  was  less  expensive  to  build,  fully  as  easy  to  administer, 
and,  while  less  expensive  to  maintain,  quite  as  popular  among 
the  authorities  on  prison  discipline,  as  well  as  quite  reformative! 
The  new  prison  was  to  contain  136  cells  in  a  building  140  feet  long, 
44  feet  wide  and  25l^  feet  high.  The  prison  was  built  by  1845. 
The  108  cells,  7  feet  by  7  feet  by  4  feet,  were  more  than  adequate 
for  the  population,  which  had  averaged  about  80.^^  The  new 
prison  cost  but  $13,177.  And  in  1845,  for  the  first  time,  the  labor 
of  a  portion  of  the  convicts  was  contracted  for  shoemaking,  at  40 
cents  a  day  for  trained  men,  and  30  cents  a  day  for  new  hands. 

The  prison  during  the  first  twenty  years  of  its  existence  gave 
some  attention  to  religious  instruction,  and  maintained  a  Sabbath 
School.  The  inspectors  of  the  prison  seem  to  have  been  highly 
unsympathetic  to  any  of  the  efforts  at  moral  and  religious  instruc- 
tion. The  law  required  the  chaplain  to  make  daily  visits  to  the 
prison  for  the  purpose  of  conversing  with  the  convicts;  but, 
reported  the  inspectors,  ' '  the  effect  of  such  visits  is  to  afford  oppor- 
tunity for  such  as  are  inclined,  to  spend  a  part  of  their  time  in 
idleness  and  deception,  while  their  sentence  requires  constant 
labor."  The  board  of  inspectors  considered  it  useless  to  compel 
the  prisoners  to  attend  Sunday  School.  The  prison  was  reported 
by  Dorothea  Dix  in  1845  to  be  deficient  in  the  means  of  general 
moral  instruction. 

NEW  HAMPSHIRE 

New  Hampshire  made  a  real  contribution  to  prison  management 
and  progress  in  this  country.  From  New  Hampshire  came  the 
Pilsburys.  First,  Moses  C.  Pilsbury,  warden  from  1818  to  1826  of 
the  State  Prison,  which  had  been  erected  in  Concord,  the  capital 
of  the  State,  in  1812.  The  son  of  Moses  Pilsbury  was  Amos,  who 
became  warden  of  the  Connecticut  State  Prison  at  Wethersfield. 
The  son  of  Amos  was  Louis,  who  became  in  1877  superintendent 
of  State  prisons  in  New  York. 

Moses  Pilsbury,  while  warden  at  Concord,  New  Hampshire,  was 
held  in  high  esteem  as  an  administrator.  Always  at  his  post,  he 
was  unceasingly  vigilant,  did  the  duties  of  contractor,  keeper  and 
clerk,  was  prompt  and  efficient  when  correction  was  necessary, 
humane  in  principle,  tender  in  sickness,  without  cessation  in  the 
instruction  of  prisoners,  and  religious  in  temperament.^^  Moreover, 
he  won  special  praise  for  converting  the  deficit  of  the  prison  into  a 
surplus,  the  institution  having  earned  for  the  State  from  $1,000  to 
$5,000  a  year  from  1822.^*    Moses  Pilsbury  was  the  first  and  earliest 


"  B.  p.  D.  S.,  1845,  p.  506. 
i*B.  p.  D.  S.,  1826,  p.  32. 
«B.  P.  D.  S.,  1826,  p.  36. 


150  History  of  American  Prisons 

of  the  enlightened  wardens  of  what  might  be  called  the  second 
period  of  American  prisons,  that  began  roughly  with  the  establish- 
ment of  Auburn  Prison  in  1816. 

The  prison  at  Concord  was  originally  of  the  old  Walnut  Street 
type,  built  in  1812,  with  large  night-rooms,  lodging  from  two  to 
six  convicts.^^  The  area  of  the  prison  was  greatly  restricted,  the 
enclosing  wall  being  but  260  feet  long  by  200  deep.^-  The  prison 
building  was  70  feet  long,  36  feet  wide,  3  stories  high,  and  contained 
36  cells.  No  quarry  or  navigable  water  adjoined  the  prison.  From 
a  quarry  two  miles  distant,  rough  granite  was  brought  to  the 
prison,  which,  when  prepared  for  market,  was  carried  to  the  Merri- 
mac  River,  that  flowed  through  Concord,  and  thence  by  boat  and 
canal  to  the  Boston  market.  In  the  earlier  years  the  chief 
employment  was  stone-cutting.^^ 

The  satisfactory  discipline  of  the  prison  was  achieved  by  Warden 
Pilsbury  through  constant  vigilance.  He  was  an  ardent  believer  in 
separate  confinement.  Plots,  he  said,  were  hatched  in  night-rooms,^^ 
and  he  had  frequently  overhead  whole  histories  of  villainy  in 
listening  to  the  conversations  of  convicts  at  night.^°  Pilsbury  con- 
demned the  practice  of  paying  assistant  keepers  and  guards  so- 
little  that  frequent  changes  occurred,  and  that  men  of  proper 
character  were  difficult  to  obtain.  Improper  familiarity  between 
keepers  and  convicts  inevitably  developed.^^ 

New  Hampshire's  prison  was  small,  inexpensive  and  rural.  The 
total  salary  list  in  1826  was  but  $1,565,  of  which  the  warden 
received  $800.  The  expense  for  food,  clothing  and  bedding  for 
the  same  year  was  only  $1,366  for  70  prisoners.  The  mortality 
was  less  than  two  per  cent.  Besides  the  stone-cutting,  the  prisoners- 
worked  as  smiths,  coopers,  weavers,  tailors,  painters,  and  at  general 
work  around  the  yard.  Crawford  found  the  prisoners  rising  at 
4 :30  in  summer,  and  working  until  7,  when  they  had  one  hour  for 
breakfast.  They  then  worked  until  12,  when  dinner  occurred. 
They  had  their  meals  in  their  cells.  They  returned  finally  to  their 
cells  at  7  in  the  evening.  Lights  were  placed  in  front  of  the  cells  in 
winter. 

The  daily  rations  of  the  prisoners,  without  variation,  were:  14 
ounces  of  salted  beef,  11^4  pounds  of  rye  and  Indian  bread,  and 
a  sufficient  quantity  of  potatoes,  and  porridge  or  beans  or  peas  for 
supper.^^ 

In  1827  Mr.  Pilsbury  was  called  to  the  wardenship  of  the  new 
Connecticut  Prison  at  Wethersfield,  in  spite  of  the  bonus  of  $200^^ 
which  had  been  for  a  number  of  years  appropriated  him  by  the 
New  Hampshire  Legislature.  Successive  wardens  did  not  reach  his 
administrative  ability,  and  Crawford  found  marked  laxity  in  the 
management. 


12  Crawford.     App.,  p.   78. 

13  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1826,  p.  25. 
i«  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1826.  p.  25. 
"B.  P.  D.   S.,   1827,  p.  55. 
18  B.  P.  D.  S.,  827,  p.  143. 

i»  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1826,  p.  101. 
20  Same,  p.  25. 


History  of  American  Prisons  151 

The  diminishing  population  of  the  prison,  from  1828  on,  was  a 
cause  of  wonder.  A  State  with  nearly  300,000  inhabitants  had  only 
48  convicts  in  its  State  prison  in  1828.  For  several  years  the 
average  was  not  over  60;  less  than  one-half  the  number  in  the 
Vermont  State  prison,  and  about  one-third  as  many  as  at 
Wethersfield.-^ 

Two  of  the  principal  causes  were  said  to  be  the  debtor  laws  and 
the  pauper  laws.^^  There  were  few  debtors  in  the  county  prisons 
in  training  for  careers  of  crime,  and  the  New  Hampshire  almshouses 
were  not  sustained,  as  in  other  States,  by  a  heavy  State  tax  for  the 
support  of  foreign  paupers.  Moreover,  the  laws  of  New  Hampshire 
provided  shorter  penalties  for  crimes  that  elsewhere  were  visited 
with  severe  sentences. 

The  Constitution  itself  of  New  Hampshire  declared : 

"A  multitude  of  sanguinary  punishments  is  impolitic  and  unjust,  the  true 
design  of  all  punishments  being  to  reform,  and  not  to  exterminate,  mankind. ' '  * 

In  1832  a  new  cell  building  of  three  stories  was  erected  at  the 
prison,  on  the  Auburn  plan,  with  120  cells,  each  6  feet  10  inches 
long,  3  feet  4  inches  wide,  and  6  feet  6  inches  high.^^  At  this  period 
the  relaxed  discipline  was  similar  to  that  of  the  State  prison  of 
Maine.  The  prison  population  was  not  considered  a  vicious  one. 
Crawford  found  corporal  punishment  forbidden  by  the  law  of  the 
State,  and  solitary  confinement  the  only  severe  punishment,  up  to 
30  days.  This  punishment  was  not  used  over  once  a  month.  The 
total  population  on  May  31,  1832,  was  only  89,  and  but  14  convicts 
were  admitted,  and  but  16  discharged  during  the  fiscal  year.  Their 
sentences  ranged  as  follows :  ^^ 

Life     5  8  years  3 

13  years  1  7  years  11 

12  years  2  6  years  8 

11  years  1  5  years  32 

10  years  7  Under  5  years  19 

By  far  the  largest  proportion  of  the  407  admitted  since  the  open- 
ing of  the  prison  in  1812  had  been  convicted  of  stealing.  The  chief 
offenses  were: 

Stealing    248      Forgery  22 

Horse   stealing    46      Making     counterfeit     notes      or 

Passing   counterfeit   money 23  money   10 

Only  two  persons  had  been  executed  in  25  years.  There  had 
been  since  the  opening  of  the  prison  but  7  persons  committed  for 
manslaughter.  The  population  had  been  almost  entirely  American- 
born,  371  out  of  407,  England  furnishing  11  and  Ireland  16.  Of 
the  407,  220  had  been  between  20  and  30  years  of  age,  and  56  under 
20.  About  25  per  cent,  of  the  prisoners  had  been  discharged  by 
pardon.  At  the  time  of  Crawford 's  visit  there  was  only  one  woman 
prisoner.^^ 

»B.  p.  D.   S.,  1831,  p.  436. 
« Crawford.     App.,  p.  78. 
2»  Crawford,  p.  80. 
"B.   P.  D.   S.,   1831,  p.  436. 
»  Bradford     Enquiry,  p.  6. 
«•  Crawford,  p.   81ff. 


152  History  of  American  Prisons 

By  1835  it  was  announced  that,  except  for  a  few  years,  the  prison, 
had  been  a  heavy  burden  to  the  State.  Since,  therefore,  it  was 
likely  to  continue  to  be  so  in  the  future,  the  board  of  inspectors 
contracted  for  the  labor  of  the  prisoners  in  such  a  manner  as  if 
possible  to  meet  all  expenses.^^  The  contractors  were  to  pay  all  the 
expenses  of  the  prison,  including  the  salary  of  the  officers.  The 
then  warden  denounced  this  proposition,  because  of  the  inevitable 
clash  of  the  interests  of  the  prison  and  of  the  contractors.^® 

In  1837  the  affairs  of  the  prison  were  unsatisfactory,  and  there 
was  much  complaint  in  the  public  press.  The  next  year  the  earn- 
ings did  not  meet  the  expenses.  The  ' '  elder  Pilsbury, ' '  Moses,  was 
called  back  to  the  wardenship.  He  designated  the  contract  system 
as  the  worst  of  all  systems,  destroying  all  the  good  contemplated 
by  the  friends  of  prison  disciplined^  In  1840  Pilsbury  requested 
the  Legislature  not  to  consider  him  again  a  candidate  for  the 
wardenship.     He  said:^ 

*  *  The  contract  system  cuts  off  all  hope  of  the  reformation  of  the  prisoner. ' ' 

There  was  a  single  contractor  now,  who  received  all  the  earnings, 
and  supported  the  institution.^^  Moral  instruction  was  given,  at 
this  period,  to  the  prisoners  by  a  chaplain  appointed  by  law,  who 
also  taught  the  prisoners.  There  was  a  small  prison  library. 
Citizens  were  admitted  to  the  Sunday  services  in  the  prison  —  an 
unusual  custom. 


VERMONT 

Vermont  and  Maine  were  States  so  relatively  remote,  in  the 
early  days  of  the  Republic,  from  the  progressive  influences  in 
prison  management  that  it  is  not  surprising  that  little  development 
of  modern  methods  or  constructive  principles  emanated  from  their 
prisons.  In  1809  Vermont  built  its  first  State  prison  at  Windsor 
on  the  west  bank  of  the  Connecticut.  In  a  plot  280  feet  long 
and  200  feet  deep  were  the  keeper's  house  and  the  cellhouse,  the 
latter  structure  being  84  feet  long,  36  feet  wide,  and  containing 
35  cells,'^  each  of  which,  according  to  the  then  customary  plan, 
was  designed  to  hold  from  two  to  six  persons.^^  When  the  Auburn 
system  began  to  influence  New  England,  Vermont  erected  in  1831 
an  additional  cellblock,  on  the  Auburn  plan,  with  136  individual 
cells,  7  feet  long,  3  feet  6  inches  wide,  and  6  feet  9  inches  high, 
with  wooden  doors,  in  which  a  nine-inch  aperture  was  constructed 
for  the  admission  of  air  and  light.  It  can  readily  be  seen  that 
this  provision  was  deplorably  insufficient,  and  must  have  rendered 
the  cells  almost  dark,  and  badly  deficient  in  air. 

Vermont's  early  prison  history  did  not  affect  materially  the 
course  of  American  prison  discipline.  Representatives  of  other 
States  seemingly  did  not  visit  Vermont,  or  seek  to  learn  from  her. 

2«  B.  p.  D.  S.,  1836  and   1837. 
27  B.  P.  D.  S.,1838,   p.   219. 
2»B.  P.  D.  S.,  Vol.  I,  p.  874. 

80  Same,  Vol.  II,  p.  445. 

81  Same,  Vol.  II,  p.  333. 

82  Crawford  App.  p.  84. 

83  Reynolds,    p.    10. 


History  of  American  Prisons  153 

Her  methods  were  economical,  not  to  say  frugal.  The  superintend- 
ent of  the  prison,  who  filled  the  roles  of  contractor,  clerk  and  agent, 
received  annually  but  $850;  the  keepers  and  guards  received  an- 
Jiually  only  $130,  and  the  physician  $100.^^  Crawford,  the  English 
•official  visitor  to  our  prisons  in  the  thirties,  found  in  1832  the  cells 
dirty  and  offensively  close  —  as  was  natural  —  and  the  discipline 
lax.  Corporal  punishment  by  flogging  was  prohibited  by  law,  the 
•dark  cell  and  restricted  diet  being  used  as  severe  measures.^^ 

The  prison 's  chief  industry  was  weaving.  For  several  years  after 
its  establishment,  the  prison  cost  the  State  from  $5,000  to  $7,000  a 
year.  Then,  for  a  long  period,  it  made  both  ends  meet.  Later,  in 
1838,  all  labor  of  convicts  was  leased  to  a  contractor,  who  in  turn 
guaranteed  to  meet  all  the  expenses  of  the  prison.  Nevertheless, 
in  1845  the  prison  cost  $2,000  more  than  its  income.  The  average 
number  of  prisoners  during  the  twenties  was  approximately  100. 

Crawford  found  in  1832  only  one  woman  prisoner  in  the  popula- 
tion of  119.  She  sewed  constantly.  The  male  convicts  worked  at 
■dyeing  yarn,  weaving,  spinning,  tailoring,  shoemaking,  blacksmith- 
ing  and  as  wheelwrights.  Each  convict  had  a  stint  to  do  and 
received  compensation  for  overwork.  Snuff  and  tobacco  were 
allowed  the  well-behaved  prisoner  in  moderate  quantities.  Letters 
'Could  be  sent  to  and  from  friends.  Visitors  were  admitted  with 
frequency.  The  prisoners  wore  party-colored  clothes,  half  green 
^nd  half  scarlet.^^ 

We  have  a  variant  from  the  dry  official  reports  of  this  prison  in 
the  shape  of  a  collection  of  ''Recollections  of  Windsor  Prison,'* 
by  one  John  Reynolds,  a  long-time  inmate  of  the  prison,  who  was 
discharged  about  1830,  and  who  gave  a  vivid  and  apparently  rela- 
tively dispassionate  account  of  the  life  in  the  institution  in  his  time. 
Reynolds  was  an  educated  man,  thoughtful,  and  gifted  in  expres- 
sion. It  is  to  be  expected  that  the  autobiography  of  a  prison 
inmate  will  be  colored,  and  one-sided,  but  on  the  other  hand,  so  is 
the  official  report.  The  released  inmate  seeks  ordinarily  to  produce 
an  account  highly  colored  and  spectacular ;  the  official  report  seeks 
to  eliminate  color,  so  far  as  possible,  and  it  seeks  the  opposite  of 
the  spectacular.  The  inmate's  report  is  a  case  of  special  pleading, 
and  often  largely  a  narrative  of  abuses  and  injustices ;  the  official 
report  is  a  case  also  of  special  pleading  —  to  the  Legislature,  and 
to  the  public  —  and  is  the  opposite  of  the  inmate's  report,  for  it 
•does  not  narrate  abuses,  and  portrays  no  injustices  to  prisoners, 
so  far  as  its  own  deliberate  management  is  concerned. 

Between  the  emotional  and  subjective  report  of  the  released 
inmate  and  the  cold  but  subjective  report  of  the  administrative 
body  of  the  prison  lies  frequently  the  truth.  In  the  case  of  John 
Reynolds,  we  have  a  man  who  was  sufficiently  logical  and  intellec- 
tual not  to  distort  and  rejoice  in  unreliability.    Plunged  into  this 

'2  Crawford.     App.,  p.   84, 
»*  B.  P.  D.   S.,  1827,  p.  103. 
8^  Reynolds,  p.  15. 


154  History  of  American  Prisons 

prison  maelstrom  of  human  wreckage,  the  outstanding  features  of 
the  prison  life  were  to  him  the  State's  inhumanity  and  stupidity, 
as  represented  by  the  acts  of  officers  and  keepers.  The  very  prison 
building  was  an  example.  The  coldest  part  of  the  prison  in  the 
winter  had  not  a  spark  of  fire  in  any  of  the  halls. 

''Many  a  time,"  he  wrote,  "have  I  made  large  balls  by  scraping 
the  frost  with  my  hand  from  the  stone  sides  of  my  cell ! "  ^  In 
the  solitary  confinement  cells,  in  winter,  the  wretched  prisoner  had 
to  keep  walking  to  keep  from  freezing  to  death !  ^^  One  small  piece 
of  bread,  and  a  pail  of  water  each  twenty-four  hours  were  his  por- 
tion ;  a  single  blanket  his  defense  against  the  bitter  Vermont  cold. 
With  wholly  inadequate  nourishment  he  fought  for  life  by  pacing 
the  dark  cell.  Of  a  certain  young  Dean  the  author  tells,  who  with 
frozen  ears  and  shivering  limbs,  exhausted  by  the  very  exercise 
necessary  to  prevent  freezing,  was  dying  in  solitary  confinement  for 
want  of  sleep.^ 

It  was  a  serious  problem,  not  confined  to  Vermont  or  Maine  alone, 
that  all  the  American  prisons  in  the  northern  States  faced  in  the 
winter  time.  There  was  great  difficulty  in  procuring  an  equal  or 
an  adequate  amount  of  heat.  Miss  Dorothea  Dix,  writing  in  1845, 
said  that  she  knew  of  no  prison  where,  as  yet,  the  officers  were 
fully  satisfied  with  the  area  stoves.  Some  cells  were  hot  and  stifling, 
some  cold  and  uncomfortable. 

This  narrative  of  Reynolds  teems  with  graphic  and  heartrending 
tales  of  the  extreme  sufferings  of  prisoners.  The  insane  were 
flogged  for  feigning  insanity.  Instruments  of  torture  were:  the 
block  and  chain,  a  log  of  wood,  from  30  to  60  pounds  in  weight, 
to  which  a  long  chain  was  fastened.  The  other  end  was  around  the 
prisoner's  ankle.  He  carried  it  wherever  he  went.  Sometimes  he 
had  to  wear  it  for  months.  Also  the  iron  jacket,  a  frame  of  iron 
that  confined  the  arms  "down  and  back."  A  person  wearing  this 
jacket  could  not  lie  down  with  any  comfort.  The  sick  were  consid- 
ered as  criminal  in  their  sickness,  and  many  died  before  they  could 
convince  their  keepers  that  they  were  sick.  Sick  persons  were 
allowed  no  food,  but  a  dish  of  crust  coffee  and  a  piece  of  bread,  onc3 
in  24  hours.  Often  they  were  given  an  emetic,  or  blistered. 
Reynolds  wrote  that  the  physicians  were  in  the  main  honorable 
men,  but  were  given  no  authority.  Ministers  neglected  the  prison, 
and  men  who  had  been  as  long  as  six  months  in  the  hospital  died 
without  a  visit  from  a  clergyman.  Twenty  years  after  the  founding 
of  the  prison,  no  Bible  class  or  Sunday  School  had  as  yet  been 
introduced,  for  the  keepers  "had  hatred  of  the  holiness  and  the 
purity  of  the  Gospel."  Ultimately,  through  the  publicity  of  a 
letter  smuggled  out  of  prison,  the  needs  of  the  prisoners  were  made 
known,  and  a  chaplain  appointed.  Reynolds  held  that  "you  cannot 
do  anything  to  a  prisoner  until  you  convince  him  of  your  real 
friendship  for  him." 

3«  Reynolds.     Recollection  of  Windsor  Prison,  p.  11. 
^  Same,  p.  36. 
38  Same,  p.  66. 


History  of  American  Prisons  155 

What  was  the  attitude  of  the  prisoners  toward  religion  and  its 
doctrines  ?  Those  whom  Reynolds  knew  held  almost  universally  to 
the  ' '  endless  punishment  school. ' '  ^  All  were  agreed  that  the  means 
of  grace  were  confined  to  this  life,  and  that  if  a  man  died  in  sin, 
his  doom  in  misery  was  fixed  forever.  Reynolds  found  both  high 
motives  and  appallingly  base  characters  within  the  same  prison 
group.  Though  the  number  of  sincere  and  hopeful  Christians 
was  very  small,  there  was  not  one  man  among  them  in  whose  mind 
the  pulse  of  virtuous  principles  was  not  still  beating. 

It  was  natural,  therefore,  that  this  sensitive  and  well-educated 
prisoner,  Reynolds,  should  declaim  in  utmost  bitterness  against 
the  keepers.  By  laws,  made  for  a  humane  government  of  the 
prison,  were  trampled  under  foot  by  every  keeper  and  guard,  from 
the  highest  to  the  lowest.  The  longer  a  keeper  stayed  at  Windsor, 
the  more  brutal  he  became.  ** Hence  prisons,"  said  the  author, 
"grow  worse  as  they  grow  older.  They  all  had  their  origin  in  a 
merciful  design  .  .  .  they  gradually  sink  down  into  the  gloom 
of  unalleviated  despotism,'^  The  stripling  keeper,  at  eight  dollars 
a  month,  imagines  himself  something  and  descends  to  every  arbi- 
trary manner.  How  can  prisoners  reform  when  they  see  their 
officers,  who  are  supposed  to  have  special  reference  to  the  good  and 
moral  reformation  of  prisoners,  act  thus? 

Were  the  prisoners  incapable  of  being  reached  through  kindness  ? 
It  was  told  by  Reynolds,  as  an  example  of  the  generous-heartedness 
of  the  inmates,  that  a  woman  whose  husband  was  an  inmate  came 
with  her  two  children  a  distance  of  300  miles  to  see  him.  She  had 
spent  her  money  and  had  already  suffered  on  the  road.  As  soon 
as  this  was  known,  the  prisoners  made  up  a  purse  of  $14  and  gave 
it  to  her,  and  also  cloth  to  dress  her  two  children.  Husbands  and 
sons,  working  in  prison  shops,  were  particularly  careful  to  keep 
their  earnings,  and  at  convenient  times  to  send  them  to  their  parents 
and  families. 

The  author  maintained  that  if  any  good  was  to  be  effected  in  the 
reformation  of  prisoners,  they  must  be  treated  with  kindness  and 
respect. 

**You  may  snarl  them  into  sin,  and  tread  them  down  to  hell,  but  you  must 
love  them  into  repentance,  and  support  them  up  the  ascent  to  heaven." 

There  was  no  danger  of  any  prisons,  by  humane  treatment,  ever 
becoming  so  mild  as  to  be  a  desirable  residence  for  any  one. 

* '  Take  the  purest  apartment  in  heaven  and  confine  a  seraph  there,  and  the 
simple  fact  that  he  is  a  prisoner  would  make  his  home  a  hell.  The  devil 
himself  would  prefer  liberty,  in  the  world  of  woe,  to  imprisonment  even  in 
paradise;  freedom  with  damnation,  to  salvation  with  restraint. 
Our  prisons  are  such  scenes  of  cruelty  and  such  schools  of  crime  because 
Christian  churches  and  Christian  individuals  are  destitute  of  the  practical 
good- will  and  the  expansive  benevolence  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ." 

It  is  impossible  not  to  feel  that  through  Reynolds^  account  of 
life  in  Windsor  Prison  we  get  a  lightning  flash  into  basic  truths 
about  the  prison  systems  of  the  time.    It  is  the  minimum,  in  most 

» Reynolds,  p.   111. 


156  History  of  American  Prisons 

instances,  that  the  student  can  draw  from  annual  reports,  and  even 
from  Legislative  documents,  regarding  the  punishment  and  cruelty- 
sides  of  prison  administration.  It  needs  a  Reynolds,  or  an  anony- 
mous writer,  fearing  for  his  very  safety  even  after  prison,  to  induct 
us  into  the  actual  horrors  of  the  time. 

We  cannot  pass  over  the  statement  of  Reynolds  that  imprison- 
ment itself  is  the  central  fact  of  prison  life.  ' '  Better  freedom  with 
damnation,  than  salvation  with  restraint. "  ^^  He  has  thus  graphic- 
ally phrased  almost  a  century  before  the  weaker  and  more  frequent 
repetition  of  the  same  emotion  to-day,  what  is  pointed  out  in  the 
contention  of  many  reformers  of  to-day  that  it  is  not  the  punish- 
ments in  prison  that  count  most,  but  the  fact  of  the  impossibility 
of  being  free  and  one's  own  master.  Freedom  is  craved  without 
cessation.  It  is  maintained  that  the  chief  punishment  is  inflicted 
upon  the  criminal  when  he  is  shut  up  within  prison  walls,  and 
that  extra  punishments  are  not  needed  for  the  prevention  of  crime, 
or  the  reformation  of  the  offender. 

Reynolds  felt  bitterly  toward  the  Boston  Prison  Discipline 
Society  which,  by  championing  the  Auburn  system,  and  by  con- 
doning thereby  the  severe  practices  of  that  method,  as  well  aa 
flogging,  seemed  to  him  to  torture  the  prisoner  while  it  could,  and 
then  threw  him  out,  unprotected,  unhelped,  and  friendless,  on  the 
scorn  of  mankind,  to  pursue  from  necessity  his  old  course,  and  be 
sent  back  again.  So,  after  his  discharge  from  Windsor,  Reynolds 
endeavored  to  found  the  "Prison  Missionary  Society"  in  New^ 
England,  which 

*' aimed  to  treat  the  prisoner  as  a  human  being,  and  to  efifect  his  reformation 
by  the  mild  means  of  the  Gospel  .  .  .  and  to  go  with  him  when  set 
free  and  to  prevent  him  from  being  compelled  to  sin  again  by  giving  him 
clothes,  money  and  employment,  and  elevating  him  to  the  dignity  of  a  citizen 
and  the  respect  of  mankind. ' '  *^ 

However,  for  lack  of  financial  support  the  plan  of  Reynolds  fell 
through,  and  was  soon  of  necessity  abandoned.  His  motives  were 
such  as  to-day  would  have  the  highest  moral  support,  although  it 
is  still  a  fact  that  charitable  organizations  or  individuals  devoted 
to  the  succor  of  the  released  prisoner  are  not  among  those  most 
readily  or  spontaneously  supported.  Moreover,  his  protests  against 
the  Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society  were  in  part  well  grounded. 
The  Boston  organization  was  a  militant  society  for  prison  reform, 
not  for  the  individual  succor  of  released  prisoners.  We  do  not 
find  in  its  records  that  it  functioned  as  a  relief  society.  There  was 
already  great  need  of  the  after-care  that  Reynolds,  knowing  from 
personal  experience  the  vital  dearth  of  such  effort,  urged  be  given. 
But  he  was  before  his  time !  Since  his  day,  many  men  have  come 
out  of  prison,  to  become  missionaries  in  the  field  of  the  succor  of  the 
convict. 

«  Reynolds,   p.   207. 
*i  Sauie,  p.  144. 


History  of  American  Prisons  157 

Because  of  his  own  experience,  and  because  of  what  prison  did 
to  all  inmates,  Reynolds  inveighed  with  intensity  against  the 
prison  system. 

"Windsor  prison  is  called  a  penitentiary;  as  properly  might  hell  be  called 
heaven.  The  spirit  of  the  penitentiary  systems  finds  no  place  there  to  lay  its 
head.  Not  the  reformation  of  the  convict  is  sought  but  their  warnings;  and 
they  are  treated  just  as  an  intelligent  but  heartless  slaveholder  would  treat 
his  negroes — made  to  work  as  long  as  they  can  earn  their  living,  and  then 
cursed  with  freedom  that  they  may  die  at  their  own  expense. ' '  ^ 

*2  Reynolds,  p.  130^ 

Recollections  of  Windsor  Prison :  containing  Sketches  of  its  History  and 
Discipline ;  with  Appropriate  Strictures,  and  Moral  and  Religious  Reflections, 
by  John  Reynolds,  Boston.     Published  by  A.  Wright,  1834. 


CHAPTER  XIV 


THE  MASSACHUSETTS  STATE  PRISON 
1826-1846 

The  State  prison  at  Charlestown  resembles  a  great  manual  labor 
school,"  wrote  F.  C.  Gray  in  1847 ;  ^  ''the  shops  are  not  equalled, 
except  in  such  great  establishments  as  Lowell. '  ^  Looking  backward 
from  this  prosperous  conclusion  of  the  period  we  are  about  to 
consider,  we  find  that  ten  years  before  the  statement  of  Gray,  in 
1837,  Governor  Everett  of  Massachusetts  had  said,  at  the  annual 
meeting  of  the  Prison  Discipline  Society  of  Boston  that 

**this,  then,  is  the  glory  of  the  modern  prison  discipline;  an  awful  waste 
of  life,  of  human  blood,  has  been  prevented;  the  tortures  of  the  former 
modes  of  punishment  are  disused;  the  aggravated  corruption,  which  badly 
managed  prisons  unavoidably  produced,  is  succeeded  by  a  purifying  moral 
influence,  and  in  numerous  well-attested  cases,  character  has  been 
retrieved. ' '  ^ 

In  1838,  the  Boston  Society  stated  that  it  was  not  aware  of  any 
penitentiary  that  had  a  better  system  of  moral  and  religious  instruc- 
tion than  the  State  Prison  of  Massachusetts.® 

And  it  is  true  that  in  the  years  from  1829  on,  Massachusetts 
made  an  earnest  effort  to  work  out,  on  the  basis  of  the  Auburn 
system,  a  plan  of  prison  administration  that  would  embody  both 
eifficiency  and  humanity.  Her  history  during  this  period  is  of 
special  interest.  It  will  be  remembered  that  the  first  twenty  years 
of  the  Massachusetts  State  Prison  had  been  years  marked  with 
cruelty  and  demoralization  after  the  earliest  years.  Now,  with  the 
erection  of  a  new  prison  building  in  1829,  and  the  introduction 
of  the  Auburn  system,  a  remarkable  change  for  the  better  quickly 
followed,  and  conditions,  which  at  the  old  prison  had  demanded 
marked  improvement,  or  the  abandonment  of  the  penitentiary, 
were  now  substantially  changed. 

The  old  conditions  had  obtained  as  late  as  1827,  when  a  repre- 
sentative of  the  Boston  Society  found  forty  convicts  scattered  in 
different  '  *  apartments, ' '  without  keeper  or  inspector  for  the  whole. 
Similar  license  was  tolerated  in  the  hospital.  The  keeper  could  not 
approach  the  cells  at  night  without  the  giving  of  warning  by 
moving  heavy  doors.* 

Recidivism  was  unchecked.^  A  typical  recidivist  was  one  Henry 
Wood,  from  Acton,  Massachusetts,  who  had  the  following  record: 

Life  sentence  for  burglary.  December  11,  1800.    Pardoned,  November,  1811. 
Six  months'  sentence  for  theft.  May,  1812.    Discharged,  November,  1812. 


^  Gray.    Prison  Discipline  in  America,  p.  47. 
2  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1837,  p.  177. 
»  B.  P.  D.  S..  1838.  p.  221. 
*  B,  P.  D.  S.,  1827,  p.  59. 
«  Ibid.,  p.  60. 

[1581 


History  of  American  Prisons  159 

Sentenced  to  three  years  for  theft,  December,  1814.  Discharged,  December, 
1817. 

Life  sentence  tor  tnert,  November,  1818.    Discharged,  October,  1824. 

Sentenced  to  seven  years  for  larceny,  May,  1825.  Now  (1827)  at  head  of 
cook  room,  with  ten  young  convicts  associated  with  him  at  night. 

A  general  search  of  the  old  prison,  in  1825,  had  disclosed  in  the 
prisoners'  cells  counterfeit  bills  already  altered  or  in  process  of 
alteration ;  also  between  20  and  30  copper-plate  dies,  prepared  and 
neatly  engraved;  also  a  large  iron  or  steel  press.*  In  short,  the 
manufacture  of  counterfeit  money  within  the  prison!  A  keeper 
was  detected  furnishing,  three  times  in  succession,  bills  to  be  altered 
by  the  prisoners.  The  counterfeiting  of  bank  bills  was  a  frequent 
and  lucrative  crime;  the  annual  report  of  the  Boston  Society  in 
1827  carried  a  list  of  237  counterfeits  of  bank  bills  then  current  in 
18  States  and  Canada. 

A  great  variety  of  skeleton  keys  had  been  taken  in  a  similar  search 
of  convicts'  rooms  and  persons,  under  the  old  regime.  The  prison 
was  a  veritable  training  school,  in  depravity.  A  Boston  merchant, 
Marshall  Prince,  who  had  lost  the  key  of  his  iron  private  chest, 
tried  in  vain  among  Boston  locksmiths  to  get  it  open.  But  when 
he  carried  it  to  the  State  prison,  **it  was  opened  before  he  had 
scarcely  time  to  look  about  him. ' '  ^  Not  only  did  unnatural  crime 
flourish,  but  the  prison  was  again  and  again  the  scene  of  riots, 
insurrections  and  other  dangerous  manifestations. 

So  terrific  were  the  well-known  evils  in  the  prison  that  in  1828 
the  Boston  Society  exclaimed  that  a  *'holy  God,  for  twenty  years, 
has  been  a  witness  (to  the  conditions),  and  we  tremble  for  ourselves, 
as  citizens  of  the  State,  lest  we  shall  be  found  partakers  in  the 
guilt  of  the  existence  and  unnecessary  continuance  of  such  an 
evil.  "8 

One  of  the  most  disturbing  features  of  the  situation  was  the 
so-called  *  *  overstint, ' '  or  bonus,  granted  by  the  contractor  for  over- 
time work  as  a  stimulus  to  convicts.  Such  overstints  totalled  about 
$6,000  a  year,  and  were  used  by  the  convicts  in  ways  antagonistic 
to  the  efforts  of  the  prison  authorities  to  maintain  order,  discipline 
and  control.  Despite  the  ruling  of  the  inspectors  that  the  overstint 
might  be  used  only  for  the  families  of  prisoners,  or  be  kept  until  the 
prisoners '  release,  and  despite  the  strict  prohibition  to  sell,  bargain, 
or  give  any  part  of  the  overstint  from  or  to  one  another,  in  practice 
the  convicts  sometimes  even  employed  it  in  hiring  legal  counsel  and 
other  persons  to  obtain  pardons  for  them,  and  sometimes  in  employ- 
ing lawyers  to  obtain  or  prevent  the  passage  of  criminal  or  penal 
laws,  which  the  convicts  liked  or  disliked. 

On  such  occasions  a  purse  was  made  up  by  the  prisoners.  Some- 
times the  fund  was  used  to  corrupt  the  small  officers  of  the  prison, 
to  obtain  indulgences  or  to  effect  an  escape.  The  most  common  use 
of  the  overstint  was  to  procure  luxuries  such  as  tea,  coffee,  tobacco, 
milk,  crackers,  fresh  fish,  butter,  cheese,  cider  and  apples.  These 
articles  materially  supplemented  the  legal  dietary  of  coarse  beef 

«B.  p.  D.   S.,   1827,  p.  62. 

■^  Ibid.,  p.  63. 

"  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1828,  p.  157. 


160  History  of  American  Prisons 

or  pork,  rye  and  Indian  meal,  molasses,  salt  fish  and  lard,^  and 
defeated  the  announced  purposes  of  a  monotonous  and  coarse  diet 
as  a  punishment  and  deterrent. 

Naturally,  in  such  a  prison,  petty  * '  perquisites ' '  flourished  among 
the  keepers,  who  took  stores,  stock  and  the  labor  of  convicts  in  their 
own  departments  at  very  low  price.  The  abuse  extended  to  the 
taking  of  leather,  iron  and  the  like.  Officers  had  shoes,  clothes  and 
farm  utensils  made  up  by  prisoners  out  of  prison  stock  for  their 
own  use;  they  had  their  wood  sawed  and  carted  by  convicts,  and 
took  provisions  for  themselves  and  their  families.  The  commissary 
officer,  though  paid  a  set  salary,  obtained  from  $400  to  $500  a  year 
in  addition  to  his  business.  An  overseer  in  the  stone  department 
received  $354  as  salary,  but  made  also  $3,000,  and  also  had  an 
income  from  contracts.  The  lesser  officers  received  five  per  cent, 
commission  on  the  proceeds  from  fees  of  visitors,  and  were  allowed 
150  pounds  of  pork  for  tending  the  swine.  These  and  many  other 
*' emoluments "  had  been  sanctioned  by  the  board  of  inspectors, 
but  had  no  legal  sanction.  The  whole  situation,  in  short,  was 
demoralizing,  and  was  heightened  by  a  division  of  authority  be- 
tween the  board  of  inspectors  and  the  warden,  and  consequent 
friction  that  developed  into  animosity,^®  and  that  led  in  1828  to  an 
administrative  organization,  whereby  the  warden  became  the 
dominant  executive  authority. 

The  State  was  consequently  forced  into  a  radical  reorganization 
of  the  prison.  The  Prison  Discipline  Society  furnished  an  archi- 
tectural plan  on  the  basis  of  the  Auburn  structure,  and  urged  the 
adoption  of  constant  silence  and  the  separation  of  prisoners  at 
night."  The  Legislature  of  1826  authorized  the  erection  of  a 
building  of  unhammered  stone,  for  the  separate  confinement  of  300 
convicts.  In  the  same  year  a  very  constructive  law  was  passed, 
giving  to  the  city  of  Boston  authority  to  discontinue  sending 
juvenile  delinquents  to  State  prison,  and  to  commit  them  instead 
to  the  House  of  Correction  at  South  Boston. 

The  new  State  prison  building  received  the  first  prisoners  in 
October,  1829.  It  was  200  feet  long,  48  feet  wide,  with  a  corridor 
9  feet  wide  (and  opened  to  the  ceiling)  surrounding  the  cellblock, 
which  was  four  tiers  high,  each  tier  containing  38  cells,  or  304 
in  all.  Each  cell  was  7  feet  long,  7  feet  high  and  3  feet  6  inches 
wide.  The  doors  were  of  wrought  iron,  with  iron  gratings  in  the 
upper  part,  fastened  by  a  lever  lock.  In  short,  a  prison  building 
of  the  Auburn  type.^^  The  new  prison  was  a  ponderous  edifice, 
and  contained  about  11,000  tons  of  granite,  20  tons  of  cast  iron, 
and  45  tons  of  wrought  iron. 

Opposite  each  cell,  in  the  outer  wall,  nine  feet  away,  was  a  little 
window,  similar  to  the  small  windows  at  Sing  Sing  prison,  built  on 
the  theory  of  contributing  light  to  the  individual  cells  through  the 
grated  doors  of  the  cells.     The  light  must  have  been  deplorably 

»  B.  p.  D.  S.,  1828,  p.  183. 

10  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1828.  p.  183. 

11  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1826,  p.  43. 
"Haynes,  p.  48. 


History  of  American  Prisons  161 

scanty,  for  the  Boston  Society  within  a  few  years  began  to  advocate 
for  American  prisons,  the  insertion  of  long  wide  windows  into  the 
outside  walls  of  such  cell-houses.  To-day  the  long  wide  windows 
are  a  regular  part  of  this  type  of  construction,  and  the  light  of  the 
sun  floods  into  the  corridors  of  the  cellblock. 

The  new  prison,  including  a  chapel  for  320  convicts  and  kitchen, 
cost  about  $86,000.^^  The  size  of  the  prison  yard  at  this  time  was 
500  by  240  feet.  The  State  had  bought  five  acres  outside  the  walls 
for  a  wharf  and  a  garden.^* 

The  revolution  in  prison  discipline  thus  brought  about  came 
without  riots  or  bloodshed.  By  1831,  there  was  high  praise  for 
the  prison  in  Governor  Lincoln's  message  to  the  Legislature.  Con- 
victs were  now  separated  at  night,  and  there  was  silence,  order, 
industry,  respectful  and  cheerful  obedience,  harmony,  mildness  and 
authority  among  the  officers.^^  The  official  and  Legislative  reports 
for  the  next  decade  and  a  half  bring  records  of  almost  uninter- 
rupted administrative  serenity  at  the  prison,  and  of  a  gradual 
socialization  in  the  mental  attitude  of  warden,  chaplain  and 
physician.  Corporal  punishment  was  employed  with  relative  infre- 
quency  at  the  prison.  In  the  six  years  from  1829  to  1834,  the 
official  statements  showed  a  yearly  average  of  64  different  persons 
thus  punished,  out  of  an  average  population  of  260  persons,  with  a 
total  average  of  451  blows.^® 

Following  the  introduction  of  the  Auburn  system,  there  was  for 
some  years  a  notable  decrease  both  in  commitments  and  recommit- 
ments, a  phenomenon  occurring  also  under  similar  conditions  in 
other  States,  and  seeming  to  show  the  deterrent  influence,  although 
only  for  a  few  years,  of  a  new  and  rigorous  penal  system.  In 
1816,  1817,  and  1818,  when  the  old  prison  was  operating,  the  yearly 
commitments  had  been  between  130  and  165.  But  in  1831,  with 
the  Auburn  system  in  operation,  there  were  but  71  commitments, 
a  smaller  number  than,  with  one  exception,  had  occurred  in  any 
year  from  1807  to  1827.^^ 

Through  the  period  that  we  are  now  considering,  the  moral 
and  religious  instruction  at  the  prison  was  a  prominent  feature. 
The  Reverend  Jared  Curtis,  who  had  been  *4oaned"  in  the  early 
twenties  to  Auburn  Prison  by  the  Boston  Society  as  chaplain, 
returned  to  New  England  to  become  the  resident  chaplain  at 
Charlestown.  In  1829  a  Sabbath  School  was  organized,  teaching 
not  only  the  Bible  but  the  three  R's.  We  shall  see  how  out  of  the 
use  of  the  Sunday  School  and  of  the  chaplain  there  developed  not 
alone  at  the  Massachusetts  prison,  but  elsewhere  the  simpler  and 
more  elementary  conceptions  of  the  social  treatment,  so  to  speak,  of 
the  inmates.  The  chaplains  teach  not  only  the  Sunday  lesson,  but 
the  A.  B.  C  's  and  some  arithmetic  and  penmanship.  The  idea  of  a 
secular  school  gradually  evolves.  In  time  we  shall  find  in  this  same 
prison  the  idea  of  a  gathering  of  the  men,  to  be  instructed  in  ethical 

1*  Haynes,  p.  51. 

"  Laws  of  Commonwealth,  etc..  1829. 

«  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1831,  p.  449. 

"  Julius.     Sittleche  Zusbaende,  Vol.  II,  p.  200. 

"B.  P.  D.  S.,  1832,  p.  557. 

6 


162  History  of  American  Prisons 

subjects  apart  from  the  Sunday  lesson  or  sermon.  As  the  concep- 
tion grows  of  the  convicts'  similarity  to  other  men,  instead  of  the 
dissimilarity,  the  sense  of  obligation  increases  on  the  part  of  the 
State  to  give  to  the  convict  what  he  had  lacked  on  the  outside, 
culminating  in  the  seventies  in  the  elaborate  reformatory  system 
that  had  its  origin  at  Elmira. 

At  Massachusetts,  by  the  end  of  the  third  decade  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  a  morning  and  evening  daily  assembly  in  the  chapel 
had  been  instituted,  with  prayer  and  the  reading  of  the  scriptures. 
A  definite  chapel  was  built  as  a  part  of  the  new  prison,  wherein 
on  the  Sabbath  about  50  young  convicts  were  instructed.  By  1831, 
from  130  to  140  residents  of  Charlestown,  of  different  religious 
denominations,  had  been  found  willing  to  engage  alternately,  from 
ten  to  twenty  at  a  time,  as  teachers  in  the  prison  Sunday  School." 
A  general  public  interest  was  being  aroused. 

On  Saturday  afternoon,  the  convicts  who  sang  well  were  gath- 
ered for  practice,  preparatory  to  the  divine  service  on  Sunday.^" 

De  Metz  and  Blouet  found,  in  connection  with  the  Massachusetts 
prison,  that  it  was  very  hard  to  get  suitable  Sunday  School  teachers, 
who  would  limit  themselves  to  a  discussion  of  the  lesson.  They 
were  inclined  to  talk  on  foreign  matters,  and  they  caused  conse- 
quent confusion  among  the  prisoners.  The  Wethersfield  Sunday 
School  had  to  be  closed  on  this  account .^^ 

We  find,  in  1832,  the  chaplain  issuing  in  the  annual  report  of 
the  board  of  inspectors  some  social  statistics  regarding  the  prison- 
ers. This  is  noteworthy,  not  because  of  the  intrinsic  value  of  the 
collated  facts,  but  because  they  are  published  facts,  gathered  with 
the  evident  design  of  knowing  more  about  the  men  in  prison.  The 
prison  is  emerging  from  the  period  when  the  inmates  were  treated 
as  so  many  human  beings  consigned  to  oblivion  and  requiring  no 
study.  It  is  an  effort,  in  a  simple  way,  to  understand  the  problem 
of  the  inmate.  It  is  the  birth,  in  Massachusetts,  of  the  statistical 
method,  applied  to  prisoners  with  the  sanction  of  the  board  of 
inspectors,  and  the  warden. 

The  chaplain  had  examined  verbally  256  inmates.  Of  his  figures 
we  reprint  the  following :  ^^ 

Total    examined    256 

Of  these,   colored,   including  Indians 48 

Born  outside  the  United  States - 48 

Did  not  know  alphabet  when  they  came  to  prison 20 

Could  read  only  in  easy  lessons  for  children 21 

Could  not  write  ^4 

Accustomed  to  ardent  spirits  before  16  years  of  age 127 

Intemperance  led  to  crime 156 

Intemperate  habits  when  admitted  to  prison 167 

One  or  both  parents  intemperate 50 

Guilty  of  theft  before  16  years  old 45 

Brought  up  without  regular  trade  or  employment 82 

Left  parents  without  consent  before  age  of  21 68 

Lived  in  habitual  neglect  of  the  Sabbath 182 

18  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1831,  p.  451. 
i»Same,   p.   543. 

20  Laws  of  the  Commonwealth,  1829. 

21  De   Metz   and   Blouet,   p.    22. 


History  op  American  Prisons  163 

The  statistical  methods  of  Curtis  were  primitive,  and  his  goal 
in  the  publication  of  the  figures  very  obvious.  He  took  his  facts 
in  large  part  undoubtedly  from  the  lips  of  the  inmates,  a  poor 
statistical  method  when  accuracy  is  required.  He  probably  colored 
the  reports  of  the  inmates  with  his  own  strong  bent  of  mind.  More- 
over, he  was  obviously  convinced  that  the  youth  who  lived  in 
habitual  neglect  of  the  Sabbath,  was  idle,  ran  away  from  home 
without  his  parents'  consent,  and  stole  before  he  was  sixteen,  and 
drank,  would  get  into  State  prison.  It  is  no  disparagement  to  his 
figures  that  we  surmise  his  strong  propensities  to  prove  a  point. 
Much  later  than  Curtis  have  we  found  figures  equally  general  and 
perhaps  equally  ** predisposed." 

In  1833,  the  Sunday  School  had  developed  an  attendance  of 
about  150,  the  warden  and  the  deputy  warden  attending  alternately, 
and  the  chaplain  acting  as  superintendent.  The  prison  report  of 
this  year  asserted  that  several  discharged  prisoners  had  reformed 
during  the  last  three  or  four  years,  and  a  large  number  had  become 
industrious  and  worthy  men.^  It  would  seem  that  ''reformation'' 
meant  in  the  period  under  discussion  a  religious  conversion,  and 
that  those  who  had  become  industrious  and  worthy  alone  had  not 
been  considered  ** reformed." 

The  presence  of  insane  persons  in  the  convict  population  was  not 
only  disturbing  to  the  discipline,  but  was  a  piteous  spectacle.  In 
the  absence  of  a  State  asylum  for  the  insane,  the  courts  were  forced 
to  commit  the  criminal  ''lunatics"  to  prison,  or  to  the  county  jails 
and  houses  of  correction.  Emphatic  agitation  by  Governor  Lincoln 
led  in  1830  to  the  establishment  of  the  State  Lunatic  Asylum  at 
Worcester.  The  horrible  condition  of  the  miserable  and  ignored 
insane  in  the  county  prisons  of  Massachusetts  was  almost  beyond 
belief.  Of  the  first  164  individuals  transferred  to  Worcester, 
considerably  more  than  half  came  from  the  jails  and  houses  of 
correction,  and  about  one-third  of  the  whole  number  had  suffered 
jail  confinement  for  periods  of  from  ten  to  thirty-two  years.^^ 

Strangely  enough,  the  law  of  1830  permitting  the  transfer  of  the 
insane,  though  applying  to  county  and  local  prisons,  did  not  extend 
to  the  State  prison.  Warden,  physician  and  chaplain  urged  the 
extension  of  the  law  to  permit  the  removal  of  idiots  and  lunatics 
from  the  State  prison : 

"The  prison  afifords  no  means  of  relieving  these  unhappy  prisoners.  They 
cannot  be  safely  employed  in  labor,  and  they  are  not  subjects  of  discipline, 
so  they  are  necessarily  confined  in  solitude,  aggravating  the  disease.  In  this 
prison  the  insane  are  forgotten  by  the  public,  and  sequestered  from  the  hu- 
manity of  their  friends  and  kindred,  and  doomed  to  spend  years  in  hopeless 
misery. ' '  ^ 

In  1844  the  board  of  inspectors  announced  that  a  penitentiary 
was  doubtless  a  very  fit  place  to  punish  crime,  but  not  to  cure  a 
malady  of  body  or  mind.^*  In  the  same  year  an  act  was  at  last 
passed  by  the  Legislature  permitting  the  transfer  of  insane  convicts 
to  Worcester.    This  was  a  merciful  provision.    Insane  prisoners,  in 

2»B.  p.  D.  S.,  1833,  p.  628. 
2»  Senate  Document  17,  1843. 
"  Senate  Document  5,  1844. 
26  Senate  Document  10,  1834. 


164  History  of  American  Prisons 

an  institution  operating  on  the  contract  plan,  were  apt  to  be 
regarded  as  simulating  insanity  in  order  to  avoid  the  strenuous 
labor  of  the  shops.  Appalling  testimony  of  the  flogging  of  insane 
persons  came  frequently  to  light  in  the  official  investigations  of 
prisons  administered  on  the  Auburn  plan,  in  Massachusetts  among 
other  States.  Dorothea  Dix  cited  an  instance  —  typical  undoubt- 
edly of  many  similar  instances  —  but  without  naming  the  institu- 
tion, in  which  a  prisoner  who  declared  himself  unable  to  work 
was  repeatedly  flogged,  as  the  rules  of  the  prison  required. 
Ultimately  the  shrieks  and  tortures  of  the  wretched  man  compelled 
the  guards  to  suspend  the  floggings.  He  was  subsequently  found  to 
be  insane  and  was  removed  to  an  asylum.^® 

The  above  efforts  of  Massachusetts  to  eliminate  one  class  of 
inmates  —  the  mentally  unbalanced  —  from  the  prison  population 
is  of  especial  interest  at  the  present  day,  because  of  the  introduc- 
tion, mainly  within  the  last  decade,  of  the  intensive  studies  of  the 
psychologist  and  the  psychiatrist  into  penal  institutions.  The  most 
obvious  forms  of  insanity  were  recognized  eighty  years  ago  in  the 
Massachusetts  prison.  But  the  subtler  forms  of  mental  irresponsi- 
bility are  but  now  being  brought  to  light,  and  to-day  it  is  generally 
held  among  the  scientific  colleagues  of  the  warden  —  the  psycholo- 
gist and  the  psychiatrist,  and  also  the  prison  physician  —  that 
there  are  three  or  four  well-marked  classes  of  mental  cases  in  the 
prison  population,  each  of  which  needs  to  be  carefully  studied  to 
determine  the  degree  of  responsibility,  and  also  the  best  disposition 
of  the  case. 

In  addition,  therefore,  to  the  clearly  insane,  the  prison  of  to-day 
shows  the  presence  of  a  considerable  number  of  feeble-minded 
persons,  some  of  whom  are  so  distinctly  non-improvable  as  to  war- 
rant their  removal  to  asylums  for  the  feebleminded,  and  their 
treatment  wholly  from  the  standpoint  of  their  mental  condition. 
In  addition,  the  prison  contains  a  third  group,  the  so-called  psycho- 
pathies, those  who  are  eccentric,  odd,  ''cranky,"  *' nutty,"  and  in 
general  so  constituted  that  they  cannot  long  conform  to  the  routine 
of  prison  life,  but  become  again  and  again  the  * '  bad  actors ' '  of  the 
prison  population.  They  cannot  generally  be  adjudged  insane,  and 
therefore  are  not  subject  to  removal  to  a  hospital  for  the  insane. 
They  remain  in  the  prison  population,  and  are  intermittent  disturb- 
ers of  the  prison  discipline  and  daily  life.  The  solution  for  this 
class  will  be  probably  found  in  their  segregation  in  a  separate  part 
of  the  prison,  or  in  a  separate  prison.  The  feebleminded  of  cus- 
todial condition  will  be  also  segregated,  as  in  the  case  of  the  recently 
established  institution  in  New  York  State,  at  Napanoch,  where  a 
former  reformatory  has  been  converted  by  law  into  an  institution 
for  the  care  of  the  delinquent  feebleminded. 

The  determination  of  mental  states  is  a  scientific  and  complicated 
process,  beyond  the  elementary  tests  that  determine  the  most  obvi- 
ous cases  of  insanity  or  feeblemindedness.  Therefore,  it  can  be 
readily  seen  that  Massachusetts  in  the  early  forties  of  the  last 

2«Dix.     Remarks,  p.  41. 


History  of  American  Prisons  165 

century  was  undoubtedly  segregating  only  the  most  obvious  cases 
of  insanity,  and  that  many  a  case  that  should  have  been  treated 
wholly  from  the  standpoint  of  mental  conditions  remained  in  the 
prison  to  be  dealt  with  as  responsible. 

The  State  Prison  authorities  in  Massachusetts  were  concerned 
far  more  than  were  those  of  other  States  about  the  lot  of  the  dis- 
charged prisoner.  While  New  York  and  Philadelphia  were  heat- 
edly controversial  regarding  the  relative  value  of  the  two  State 
prison  systems  they  were  developing  —  while  New  York  was 
engaged  in  a  constant  economic  battle  with  the  ' '  mechanics ' '  in  the 
matter  of  prison  labor,  and  was  exploiting  the  prisoner  for  the  sake 
of  the  balance  sheet,  and  while  Philadelphia  was  keeping  the  in- 
mate of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  absolutely  secluded  from  the 
approach  of  any  other  inmate,  the  Massachusetts  authorities  were 
acquiring  the  social  sense  prison  administration.  They  were  seeing 
that  the  discharged  prisoner  was  a  problem  as  serious  as  —  and 
perhaps  a  more  serious  problem  than  —  the  inmate  who  came  to  the 
prison  for  the  first  time.  The  glaring  folly  of  turning  a  released 
prisoner  loose  without  help  or  funds  —  except  for  the  trivial  few 
dollars  that  were  customary  —  and  expect  him  in  some  way  or 
other,  to  become  honest  and  God-fearing  and  to  refrain  henceforth 
from  crime,  was  beginning  to  sink  into  the  official  minds  of  Massa- 
chusetts. Something  had  to  be  done  for  the  "man  coming  out.'' 
We  saw,  in  our  study  of  the  Vermont  prison,  how  a  single 
ex-convict,  Reynolds,  sought  to  make  Vermont  understand  the 
point  and  failed.    Massachusetts  ultimately  did  better. 

As  early  as  1816  a  committee  of  the  Legislature  had  recom- 
mended that  a  wooden  building  should  be  erected  outside  the  walls 
of  the  State  prison  as  a  ''home"  for  discharged  prisoners.  The 
Legislature  took  no  action,  and  the  project  died.  Again,  in  1829, 
the  question  was  raised  in  the  Legislature,  and  the  board  of  inspec- 
tors were  asked  to  give  their  opinion  as  to  the  feasibility  of  such 
an  asylum  for  the  employment  of  discharged  prisoners,  with  wages 
in  proportion  to  earnings,  until  the  discharged  man  should  find 
other  honest  employment,  thus  giving  an  opportunity  to  those 
sincerely  desirous  of  reforming. 

By  a  curious  process  of  reasoning,  the  inspectors  advised  em- 
phatically against  the  project.^'^  In  the  first  place,  it  hadn't  been 
done  anywhere  else.  They  conceded  that  it  was  harder  for 
discharged  inmates  to  find  work  than  for  anyone  else,  and  they 
stated  that  the  extent  of  the  mischief  caused  by  the  inability  of 
discharged  prisoners  to  secure  employment  could  not  be  accurately 
determined.  However,  there  were  serious  objections  to  herding 
discharged  prisoners  together.  Such  an  asylum  would  become  a 
school  of  crime,  and  a  center  of  criminal  associations,  where  those 
seeking  criminals  could  always  find  them. 

Therefore,  such  an  asylum  would  simply  be  what  the  State  prison 
was  before  the  Auburn  system  was  introduced,  a  center  of  pro- 
miscuous and  debauching  association.     But  if  the  asylum  should 

27  Senate  Document  2,  1830. 


166  History  of  American  Prisons 

be  conducted  on  the  Auburn  plan,  with  solitary  confinement  at 
night,  and  vigilant  inspection  by  day,  to  limit  and  prevent  corrup- 
tion, then  it  would  be  exceedingly  doubtful  if  any  convict  would 
voluntarily  enter  such  an  establishment.  So  the  inspectors,  having 
reasoned  clear  around  the  circle,  suggested  the  greater  feasibility 
of  allowing  prisoners  to  remain  in  the  State  Prison  itself  for  a 
time  after  discharge,  at  a  fixed  stipend,  because  the  inspectors  saw 
no  difference  between  the  State  Prison,  as  conducted,  and  the  kind 
of  an  asylum  that  their  own  imaginations  had  developed. 

We  find  no  record  that  this  proposed  asylum  was  established, 
beyond  the  statement  of  Francis  C.  Gray,^^  probably  referring  to 
this  movement,  that  the  plan  was  put  on  trial  and  was  abandoned 
after  a  few  years.  Despite  his  statement,  we  are  led  to  believe  that 
he  was  in  error,  for  even  the  reports  of  the  Prison  Discipline 
Society  bring  no  mention  of  the  undertaking,  which  would  have 
been  the  first  of  its  kind  in  this  country  of  which  we  have  learned. 

However,  by  a  law  of  1845,  a  new  and  unusual  official  effort  — 
which  still  exists  in  1921  —  was  made  by  Massachusetts  to  render 
easier  the  lot  of  the  man  leaving  prison.  A  ''State  Agent"  was 
appointed 

**to  counsel  such  discharged  prisoners  as  may  seek  his  aid  and  take  such 
measures  to  procure  employment  for  such  of  them  as  may  desire  it,  by  corre- 
sponding with  persons  in  agricultural  and  mechanical  pursuits,  and  with 
benevolent  individuals  and  associations. "  ^ 

Close  on  the  heels  of  this  entirely  new  principle  of  State  aid,  a 
voluntary  association  was  formed  in  Boston,  called  the  **  Boston 
Society  in  Aid  of  Discharged  Convicts,"  which  co-operated  with 
the  State  Agent,  and  indeed  appointed  him  also  the  agent  of  the 
private  society,  thus  enabling  him  to  fill  both  the  State  position 
and  the  private  position.  He  visited  prisoners  prior  to  their 
release,  found  work  very  successfully  for  them,  secured  or  supplied 
board  and  lodging  for  them  in  respectable  families  until  work  was 
secured,  and  in  general  created  in  the  American  system  of  prison 
discipline  a  new  and  highly  important  branch.  It  was  even  in  the 
previous  year,  1844,  that  the  Prison  Association  of  New  York  was 
founded,  which  also  established  immediately  as  a  part  of  its  work 
the  relief  of  discharged  prisoners.  Therefore,  in  these  two  leading 
States,  at  this  date,  a  new  and  vitally  important  work  was  officially 
taken  up  by  two  new  organizations  and  an  official  agent  of  the 
State  in  the  case  of  Massachusetts.  The  responsibility  of  society 
for  the  assistance  of  the  inmate  subsequent  to  his  prison  term 
was  at  last  recognized  officially,  by  both  the  State  and  the 
community.  Gray  cited  one  respectable  cabinet  maker  who  had 
employed  in  the  last  twelve  years  some  fifty  discharged  prisoners 
and  had  never  discharged  one  of  them  for  bad  conduct.  Only  two 
or  three  left  of  their  own  accord. 

Shall  we  not  anticipate  that  in  an  intellectual  center  like  Boston 
there  should  early  develop  something  like  a  prison  library?     The 

28  Prison  Discipline  in  America,  p.  56. 

2»  Gray.     Prison  Discipline  in  America,  p.  57. 


History  of  American  Prisons  167 

enormous  amount  of  time  spent  by  the  prisoner  by  himself  in  his 
own  cell  naturally  led  to  the  idea  that  he  should  be  profitably 
employed,  and  since  he  did  not  live  in  association,  and  had  no 
human  companion,  the  book  early  suggested  itself.  Indeed,  one 
complaint  against  the  "over-stint"  of  the  twenties  had  been  that 
prisoners  sometimes  used  the  money  for  the  purchase  of  **  infidel 
books.  "^^  By  the  end  of  the  period  we  are  now  studying  (1845) 
the  prison  library  was  being  maintained  by  an  appropriation  of 
$100  a  year  from  the  earnings  of  the  convicts,  though  it  was  not 
supported  hy  the  convicts.  Books  of  a  religious  or  moral  nature 
might  be  taken  out  and  returned  by  the  prisoners  weekly.  Many 
of  the  convicts  owned  their  own  books ;  just  as  many  of  them  owned 
musical  instruments,  which  books  and  instruments  were  purchased 
for  them  by  the  warden  from  their  own  money.  Those  who  chose, 
could  pass  one  hour  on  Saturday  afternoon  in  the  chapel  in  the 
'practice  of  music.  The  convicts  had,  in  all,  about  five  hours  a 
day  for  reading  and  writing  in  their  own  cells,  including  the  time 
allotted  to  them  for  their  meals.®^ 

The  library  had  been  initiated  by  a  donation  of  $50,  given  by  the 
mother  of  a  life  prisoner  to  her  son,  that  he  might  have  proper 
reading.  The  books  purchased  with  this  sum  he  used  for  a  while, 
and  then  placed  them  in  general  circulation,  for  his  fellow-prison- 
ers. Prisoners  added  their  own  books  to  the  library,  and  a  gift  of 
$50  came  from  a  New  York  friend.  The  prisoners  were  furnished 
from  the  outside  with  temperance  and  religious  papers  and 
tracts.^ 

To-day  the  prison  library  is  one  of  the  essentials  of  a  well-con- 
ducted prison.  Indeed,  the  "turn-over"  in  the  books  in  many  a 
prison  exceeds,  it  is  said,  the  circulation  in  many  a  public  library. 
Books  are  a  solace  to  the  prisoner,  the  extent  of  which  cannot  be 
measured.  And  we  note  also  in  the  Massachusetts  "program"  of 
the  social  development  of  the  prison  the  permission  for  an  hour  of 
instrumental  practice  on  Saturday  afternoon.  Herein  lay  the  germ 
of  the  development  of  the  prison  orchestra,  which  has  finally  come 
to  pass  in  many  prisons.  At  the  church  service  on  Sunday  there 
was  music,  both  vocal  and  instrumental. 

Two  other  developments,  just  at  the  close  of  this  period,  dis- 
tinguish significantly  the  Massachusetts  State  Prison  as  the  leader 
in  humanitarian  work  during  this  period.  There  were,  when  Gray 
wrote  in  1847,^  more  than  100  small  gardens  in  the  Massachusetts 
prison  yard,  each  the  property  of  the  prisoner  who  cultivated  the 
few  square  feet  of  earth,  bounded  by  refuse  boards.  Therein  the 
convicts  were  permitted  to  grow  tomatoes,  lettuce,  cucumbers, 
onions  and  other  vegetables  for  their  own  use,  and  the  convicts 
were  even  allowed  to  leave  the  shops  for  a  few  minutes  in  order 
to  attend  to  their  gardens.  Needless  to  say,  they  were  privileged 
to  eat  individually  what  they  raised  individually. 

«>B.  p.  D.   S^   1829,  p.  245.  ' 

81  Gray.     Prison  Discipline  in  America,  p.  53. 

82Dix.      Remarks,   p.   53. 

^  Gray.     Prison  Discipline  in  America,  p.  51. 


168  History  of  American  Prisons 

All  this  was  a  breaking  down  of  the  original  severities  of  the 
Auburn  system.  Where  so  many  possible  contacts  of  the  prisoners 
with  each  other  existed,  there  could  not  fail  to  be  association. 
Indeed,  in  no  prison  has  it  ever  been  possible,  apparently,  to  keep 
the  inmates  from  communicating  to  some  extent  with  each  other. 
In  the  rigid  Auburn  system,  the  prisoners  nevertheless  talked, 
even  though  it  might  be  almost  literally  by  ventriloquism.  In  the 
Eastern  Penitentiary  of  Pennsylvania  they  conversed  through  the 
sewer  pipes  when  the  closets  were  being  flushed.  Here  in  Massa- 
chusetts they  evidently  gave  the  prisoners  some  chance  to  associate 
and  to  exchange  ideas,  for  a  huge  stride  in  progressive  and  humane 
management  was  taken  by  the  Massachusetts  authorities  when  they 
not  only  allowed  gardens,  but  actually  instituted  a  debating 
society  —  around  the  early  forties. 

In  the  prison  gardens  lay  the  germ  of  one  of  the  strongest 
principles  of  modern  penology,  namely,  the  reclamation  of  the 
inmate  through  the  creation  in  him  of  an  abiding  interest  and 
pleasure  in  producing  honest  values,  and  in  returning  to  the  soil. 
Nature  has  an  exceptional  effect  upon  many  prisoners.  Contact 
with  the  animals  of  the  farm  is  a  potent,  if  often  temporary,  influ- 
ence for  good.  The  broad  fields,  the  crops,  the  forestation,  the 
work  on  the  highways,  all  bring  the  inmate  out  into  nature,  and 
during  the  process,  it  is  generally  found  that  disciplinary  problems 
are  fewer,  and  that  the  prisoner's  own  character  is  strengthened 
in  responsibility  and  in  his  relations  to  his  fellows.  Throughout 
the  entire  period  that  we  have  been  considering,  from  1776  on,  the 
latent  forces  within  the  prisoner  have  almost  uniformly  failed  to 
be  understood.  He  has  been  tortured,  disciplined,  driven  to  work, 
condemned  to  silence,  forced  into  a  regime  where  a  year  was  but 
a  succession  of  uniformly  monotonous  days,  deprived  of  friends, 
and  stripped  of  hope.  An  outcast  in  prison,  he  has  emerged  from 
prison  into  a  state  of  at  least  partial  outlawry  and  almost  total 
ostracism,  deprived  of  citizenship  and  shunned  of  honest  men.  He 
has  been  driven  to  work,  and  commanded  in  every  detail  of  his 
prison  life.  He  has  been  required  to  be  the  passive  agent  of  the 
State,  and  that  prison  has  been  best  disciplined  where  the  prisoner 
has  received  orders  and  has  obeyed  them  implicitly.  The  keystone 
of  the  Auburn  system  has  been  seen  to  be  silence  and  obedience, 
under  almost  certain  infliction  of  grievous  punishment  in  case  of 
disobedience.  The  system  itself  has  been  proved  to  be  the  antidote 
to  the  kind  of  lewd  and  vicious  self-expression  among  the  inmates 
that  flourished  in  the  old  promiscuous  prisons. 

In  1843,  the  warden  suggested,  and  the  inspectors  approved  of 
the  proposition,  that  as  an  encouragement  to  the  prisoners,  he  be 
allowed  to  give,  with  the  approval  of  the  inspectors,  one  or  two  days 
in  each  month  off  the  sentence,  in  case  of  good  conduct.  We  do 
not  find  that  this  was  carried  out.^^ 

If  we  ask  ourselves  why  it  was  not  obvious  to  the  early  adminis- 
trators that  rewards  were  the  most  effective  methods  of  securing 

85  Senate  Document  17.  1843. 


History  of  American  Prisons  169 

diligence  in  work  and  readiness  to  obey,  we  have  to  note  that 
even  Dorothea  Dix  wrote,  in  1845,  that 

**some  persons  advocate  the  system  of  rewards  in  prison  for  a  term  of  good 
conduct  or  for  special  diligence.  Any  supposed  advantage  from  this  plan 
would  be  overbalanced  by  increased  difficulties  of  discipline.  Jealousies  and 
quarrels  would  arise;  the  judgment  of  the  ward-officer  would  be  at  fault, 
and  insubordination  would  follow.  Complex  rules,  like  complex  machinery, 
are  often  out  of  order. ' '  ** 

The  quotation  is  interesting,  because  it  acknowledges  that  the 
administrative  equipment  of  the  prison  was  not  such  as  to  be  relied 
upon  for  the  exercise  of  fair  and  careful  judgment.  The  "honor 
system,"  even  in  primitive  form,  could  not  as  yet  be  set  up,  because 
the  honor  system  depends  upon  fairness  of  judgment  in  the  subor- 
dinate officials  of  a  prison.  The  statement  of  Dorothea  Dix  was 
not  that  the  inmates  could  not  be  dealt  with  as  individuals,  but 
that  the  prison  was  not  equipped  with  officers  to  perform  that  task. 
Furthermore,  there  was  the  assumption  that  unless  all  inmates  were 
treated  alike,  there  would  be  grievous  disciplinary  troubles.  The 
whole  reformatory  system,  introduced  with  the  establishment  of 
Elmira  Reformatory  in  the  seventies,  was  the  direct  protest  against 
the  theory  of  the  mass-treament  of  the  individuals  that  make  up 
the  prison  population.  One  of  the  fundamental  distinctions  be- 
tween the  State  prisons  and  the  reformatories,  for  years,  was  that 
the  prison  was  the  seat  of  mass-treatment  of  inmates,  and  the 
reformatories  the  seat  of  a  progressively  intelligent  treatment  of 
the  individual  prisoner. 

In  1843,  Warden  Lincoln,  who  for  eleven  years  had  managed 
most  acceptably  the  prison,  was  assassinated  by  an  insane  convict. 
His  place  was  filled  by  Chas.  Robinson,  promoted  from  deputy- 
warden.  It  was  under  this  latter  warden  that  certain  humanities 
of  prison  life  began  to  flourish.  Robinson  wrote,  in  his  first 
report : 

**I  have  long  looked  upon  a  man  as  a  man,  whether  he  be  the  occupant 
of  a  palace  or  a  prison.  The  more  he  has  erred  or  strayed,  the  more  he  is 
to  be  pitied.  ...  If  I  have  erred  at  all,  I  should  prefer  to  err  on  the 
side  of  kindness,  clemency  and  humanity.  .  .  .  With  the  exception  of 
three  cases,  the  government  of  the  prison  has  been  administered  without 
corporal  punishment.  The  shower  bath  (installed  a  few  years  before)  has 
not  been  used.  .  .  .  There  is  no  sane  convict  that  cannot  be  reached 
by  sincere  and  persevering  affection.  Men  may  be  governed  by  severity,  but 
not  reformed.  ...  It  requires  more  time  to  govern  by  appeal  to  the 
affection,  to  reason  and  to  conscience.''^®  • 

It  was  not  surprising  that  in  accordance  with  this  remarkably 
modern  attitude,  there  should  have  developed  another  innovation 
in  American  prison  life  —  a  society  among  the  convicts  for  moral 
improvement  and  for  mutual  aid.  The  warden  was  president  of 
the  society,  and  any  convict  might  belong  to  it  by  giving  a  formal 
promise  to  lead  an  orderly  and  virtuous  life,  and  by  taking  in 
addition  a  pledge  of  total  abstinence  from  liquor.  The  society 
met  once  a  fortnight  and  some  previously  determined  question 

»*Dix.     Remarks,  p.  12. 

^  Senate  Document  5,   1844. 


170  History  of  American  Prisons 

was  discussed  at  each  meeting.  A  committee  of  the  conference 
was  appointed  to  promote  the  objects  of  the  society,  the  said 
committee  consisting  of  the  warden,  chaplain  (who  was  vice-presi- 
dent), the  clerk  (who  was  secretary)  and  six  convicts,  who  were 
chosen  by  a  majority  of  the  members,  and  approved  by  the  warden 
as  president.  About  three-fourths  of  the  total  population  of  the 
convicts  belonged  to  the  society,  which  was  founded  because  the 
convict  was  seen  to  be  much  like  other  persons,  and  not  an  incarnate 
demon. 

Said  Gray,  in  1847:^ 

"All  such  intercourse  among  them  as  does  not  tend  to  corrupt  them,  to 
produce  disorder,  or  to  interrupt  their  labor  —  if  in  the  presence  of  an 
officer  —  is  humanizing  and  beneficial.  If  people  say  this  is  not  the  Auburn 
system,  then  let  us  call  it  the  'John  Howard  system.'  We've  come  back  to 
him!" 

It  certainly  was  not  the  Auburn  system.  It  was  penological 
heresy  of  the  most  insurgent  sort.  This  Massachusetts  system 
admitted  through  the  *' Society  for  Improvement  and  Mutual  Aid'^ 
the  convict  to  a  place,  however  slight,  in  the  administration  of  the 
institution,  for  it  gave  him  a  chance  to  express  an  opinion,  before 
the  prison  community,  on  moral  and  ethical  questions,  whereby, 
at  least  indirectly,  the  ethical  standards  of  the  institutions  them- 
selves would  be  affected.  It  gave  the  convict,  moreover,  a  sense  of 
being  a  member  of  a  community,  a  fellow-being  not  only  with  his 
convict  associates,  but  with  the  officers  themselves.  It  made  the 
prison  no  longer  simply  a  walled  enclosure,  within  which  certain 
desperate  humans  endured  a  wholly  unnatural  and  non-social 
existence.  This  society  restored  to  him  the  power  and  the  pleasure 
of  normal  speech,  where  silence  had  been  the  first  of  the  prison 
commandments.  The  society  recognized  in  him  an  individual, 
sentient,  sensitive  man,  with  the  ability  and  the  right  of 
independent  thought. 

In  truth,  this  society,  more  than  any  other  phenomenon  of  the 
Massachusetts  prison,  proclaimed  the  fact  that  the  Auburn  system 
did  not  compass  all  wisdom  in  prison  discipline.  Whether  the 
society  ultimately  failed  or  succeeded,  the  first  great  step  had  been 
thus  taken  in  Massachusetts  toward  establishing  inmate  interest 
and  inmate  participation  in  the  principles  and  the  methods  of 
administration  of  the  institution.  And,  with  a  prophetic  voice, 
Gray  designated  the  prison  ag  an  "asylum  and  moral  hospital  for 
guilt,"  which,  he  said,  some  of  the  benevolent  believed  that  it 
should  be.^^ 

Sunday  Schools  had  already  developed  in  American  prisons,  but 
such  gatherings  had  been  composed  of  small  groups  of  convicts, 
in  classes  taught  by  citizens,  and  held  to  certain  well-defined 
religious  and  elementary  educational  lines.  Undoubtedly  the  Sun- 
day School  was  the  first  step  toward  a  larger  grouping  of  prisoners 
—  but  the  distance  between  small,  segregated  classes  in  Sunday 
School  and  a  body  embracing  three-fourths  of  the  population,  for 


8T  Gray.     Prison  Discipline  in  America,  p.  52. 
38  Gray.     Prison  Discipline  in  America,  p.  63. 


History  of  American  Prisons  171 

the  discussion  of  ethical  questions,  was  considerable.  Sunday- 
Schools  were  but  a  slight  departure  from  the  cardinal  principle 
of  constant  isolation  of  the  prisoners.  The  mutual  benefit  society, 
on  the  other  hand,  announced  by  its  very  existence  that  mental 
intercourse  among  prisoners,  if  decent  and  supervised,  was  benefi- 
cial. In  short,  the  complete  integrity  of  the  Auburn  and  the 
Pennsylvania  systems  was  challenged  by  this  convict  society  —  and 
it  was  a  noteworthy  phenomenon  in  the  progress  of  American  prison 
administration. 

To-day,  associations  of  and  among  convicts  are  a  part  of  the 
program  of  most  progressive  American  prisons,  ranging  from 
religious  associations  of  not  especially  close  structure  to  the  Mutual 
Welfare  League,  which  in  its  original  form  at  Auburn  and  Sing 
Sing  Prisons  was  a  democracy  among  the  prisoners,  functioning 
through  various  committees  and  representative  groups.  It  is  no 
longer  surprising  to  find  the  convicts  maintaining  certain  group 
organizations.  It  is  recognized  that  Americans  are  prone  to  *'join" 
things,  and  many  prisons  have  taken  advantage  of  this  trait  to 
permit,  for  the  good  of  the  prison  administration,  the  inmates  to 
maintain  certain  organizations. 

It  is  also  worthy  of  note  that  from  1838  on,  the  convicts  were 
allowed  a  distinct  ** Sunday  suit,"  the  Massachusetts  State  Prison 
being  perhaps  the  only  prison  in  the  United  States  to  give  to  its 
inmates  this  physical  mark  of  recognition  of  the  Lord's  Day.'*^ 
George  Combe,  the  Scottish  phrenologist,  visiting  the  prison  in 
1838,  found  the  customary  prison  costume  to  be  of  coarse  woolen 
cloth,  with  the  left  side  blue  and  the  right  side  red.^ 

In  our  chapter  on  the  State  Prison  of  New  Jersey  we  shall  speak 
of  this  noteworthy  Scotch  phrenologist  and  social  philosopher  in 
detail.  When  he  visited  the  Massachusetts  prison,  he  found  that 
the  prisoners  appeared  like  tradesmen  in  a  well-regulated  factory. 
He  examined  the  heads  of  eight  or  nine  criminals,  and  found  the 
animal  organs  large  in  proportion  to  those  of  moral  sentiments  and 
intellect,  but  not  so  much  so  as  the  average  of  criminals  he  had 
examined  in  Britain. 

Spurzheim  in  1832  found  —  so  the  story  goes  —  in  this  prison  a 
head  so  well  developed  in  moral  and  intellectual  qualities  that  he 
couldn't  conceive  how  the  man  came  to  be  under  sentence  for  a 
crime.    Afterwards  it  was  discovered  that  he  was  not  guilty !  "^ 

Yet  the  gradual  introduction  of  these  much  more  lenient  methods 
of  dealing  with  the  inmates  was  not  without  comment,  even  from 
the  friends  of  humane  administration.  Dorothea  Dix  visited  the 
prison  several  times  during  this  period,  and  found  the  discipline 
* '  lax  in  the  extreme. "  *^  "  Since  the  prison  rules  have  been  modi- 
fied, ' '  she  wrote,  *  *  or  dispensed  with,  as  time  advances  the  difficulty 

8»  Combe.     Notes  on  the  United   States,   p.   3  82. 
«»B.  P.  D.   S.,   1838,  p.  221. 
"  Dix.     Remarks,  etc.,  p.  19. 
*2  Notes,  etc. 


172 


History  of  American  Prisons 


of  preserving  order  and  assuring  obedience  has  increased."  She 
published  the  following  comparative  table,  indicating  the  growing 
frequency  of  punishment: 


Days 

solitary 


AprU,  1844 
April,  1845 
May,  1844. 
May,  1845 , 
June,  1844 
June,  1845 


6H 

18H 

5 

18 

5 

37 


A  typical  month  may  be  cited  to  show  the  causes  of  punishments 
inflicted : 


Cases 

Stripes 

Days 
soUtary 

June,  1845. 
T^pfiisimr  t.o  ■wrnrlc 

3 
6 
1 
3 

3 

l\4^«1rinir  a  nninp  xvhilp  in  hin  rpII                                                         .  . 

6 

4 

QuarrelioK  with  a  fellow  convict        ...          

6 

3 

6 

1 

Gross  insolence  to  an  ofiBcer  and  disobedience      

5 

3 

4 

8 

TT»nnlp-ni>p    nnH  Viavini?  r>rr>hihit.pd  ftrticlpa                                     .  . 

1>4 

2 

1 

Dorothea  Dix  continued: 

"The  system  of  indulgence  often  works  well  for  a  few  months,  and  pos- 
sibly for  a  year  or  two.  .  .  .  But  I  have  never  known  any  prison  in  which 
discipline  is  much  dispensed  with,  which  has  not  fallen  into  confusion,  and  in 
which  it  could  be  found  that  the  good,  of  the  convicts  has  eventually  either 
morally  or  physically  been  promoted.  Eules  must  be  established  and  en- 
forced. ...  I  respect  the  feeling  which  has  prompted  the  wish  to  dispense 
with  forms  and  the  appearance  of  restraint,  and  some  close  rules,  .  .  . 
but  I  am,  from  a  four  years'  observation  of  jails  and  penitentiaries,  obliged 
to  allow,  that  greater  restraints  are  necessary  in  all  these  than  our  wishes, 
putting  aside  reasoning  and  consequences,  would  determine.  ...  It  is 
with  convicts  as  with  children;  unseasonable  indulgence  indiscreetly  granted, 
leads  to  mischief,  which  we  may  deplore  but  cannot  repair.*' 

It  would  be  difficult  to  find  in  any  present-day  writings  of 
students  of  American  penology  a  more  cogent  statement  and  warn- 
ing as  to  the  dangers  of  the  too  hasty  or  comprehensive  efforts  at 
the  ''democratization"  or  communizing  of  the  prison  population,  or 
of  the  over-trustful  nature  that  sees  in  a  prison  population  only, 
or  largely,  the  place  in  which  to  experiment  with  advanced  forms 
of  social  relationships.  The  honor  system,  too  liberally  installed; 
the  mutual  welfare  league  movement,  too  hurriedly  superimposed 
upon  a  bewildered  population,  by  nature  looking  for  ''cinches'' 


History  of  American  Prisons  173 

and  ''easy  berths,"  can  be  to-day?  still  diagnosed  by  the  careful 
yet  comprehensive  analysis  of  Dorothea  Dix,  written  as  a  result 
of  an  extended  investigation,  over  a  half  century  ago.  Favors 
within  prison  walls  have  to  be  given  with  great  discretion;  the 
establishment  of  new  ''rights"  for  the  inmates  has  to  be  accom- 
panied with  patient  and  repeated  interpretation  to  the  inmates. 
An  administration  that  is  lenient  and  inclined  to  be  idealistic  gets 
easily  the  reputation  of  being  "soft"  and  "easy,"  while  the 
administration  that  closes  down  on  privileges  and  seeks  to  revert  to 
ancient  methods  can  no  longer,  on  the  other  hand,  be  regarded 
by  the  inmates  as  proceeding  in  a  usual  or  reasonable  manner. 
Hence,  the  prison  administration  finds  itself  between  the  two  ex- 
tremes, and  most  prison  wardens,  who  seek  to  think  the  situation 
through,  determine  to  be  fair  and  square  with  the  inmates,  granting 
increased  privileges  only  gradually,  and  being  suspicious  of  com- 
prehensive or  wholesale  plans  for  more  freedom  within  the  prison, 
basing  their  opinions  upon  what  they  know  of  the  past,  plus  their 
own  hesitation  in  establishing,  where  it  is  not  absolutely  necessary, 
a  condition  that  once  granted  cannot  be  easily  withdrawn. 

According  to  Dorothea  Dix,  there  was  no  prison  between  Canada 
and  the  Carolinas  and  Tennessee  where  so  much  freedom  was 
enjoyed  as  at  Charlestown. 

We  turn,  finally  in  this  chapter,  to  the  industrial  and  financial 
aspect  of  the  prison  administration.  Other  American  prisons,  like 
Auburn  and  Wethersfield,  featured  their  industrial  successes  dur- 
ing this  period.  Massachusetts  made  no  such  consistent  record  of 
success.  Stone-cutting  was  for  years  the  chief  industry.*^  From 
1814  to  1824,  under  the  old-fashioned  system,  the  total  net  expense 
of  maintaining  the  prison  had  been  $78,328.44.  For  the  prison, 
the  State  had  paid  out  from  1805  to  1828  more  than  $300,000.** 
There  followed  then  several  exceptional  years  of  activity  in  stone- 
cutting.  But  in  the  entire  period  from  1828  to  1846,  the  total  net 
earnings  of  the  prison  above  all  expenses  amounted  to  but  $9,522.84. 
In  short,  it  just  paid  expenses,  salaries,  food,  clothing,  bedding, 
and  the  bounties  to  discharged  convicts  being  paid  out  of  gross 
earnings.^ 

The  prison  was,  however,  a  busy  institution.  The  total  gross 
earnings  from  1832  to  1846,  inclusive,  amounted  to  $516,461.96,  the 
average  annual  per  capita  sum  earned  by  each  prisoner  for  the 
prison  being  $121.42.^*  Under  the  Auburn  system,  introduced  with 
the  new  prison  building,  no  overstint  was  allowed.*^  On  his  dis- 
charge, the  prisoner  received  five  dollars  and  a  suit  of  clothes."** 
Combe  wrote  in  his  diary  in  1838  that  the  prisoners  appeared  like 
tradesmen  in  a  well-regulated  factory. 

*«B.  p.  D.   S.,   1826,   p.   16. 
**B.  p.  D.  S.,  1828,  p.  164. 

4S  n-fair  t>      T»      in     Ann      'Wrk 


**B.  P.  D.  S.,  1828,  p.  164. 
*«  Gray.  P.  D.  in  App.  No.  1. 
*«Gray,  p.  77. 
«B.  P.  D.  S.,  1832,  p.  539. 
*8B.  P.  D.  S.,  1833,  p.  637. 


174 


€V  American  Pkdomb 


The  f oUowing  were  the  chief  oeenpatioiis  at  the  beginniiig  of  the 
period  we  have  been  diseoflBiiig : 

Totml  iK^nlatian,  Septembo-  30,  1826,  313: 

Om  Owtift  FortkePriMB. 

IBS      Wm^cn 10 

a      TkOdn  U 

35      New  iMildns 34 

26      WariMfs  aad  waiten 10 

6  la  hoapital  10 

3      RIarfcMitfca  5 

1      GMMen 5 

7  Oakna  pidkara 8 

Cooka  0 

Baiboa  3 

la  Mib  2 

The  proeeeds  of  the  labor,  in  the  stone  department,  of  about  one- 
third  of  the  number  of  inmates  on  the  prison  were  more  than 
to  eorer  the  cost  of  proTisions,  clothing,  bedding  and 
of  offieera.* 
To  facilitate  the  stone  indivtry,  a  lock-gate  was  baih  in  the 
part  of  the  prison  jard,  throng  which  boats  laden 
eoold  pMB  from  the  bay.  In  this  basin,  prisoners  were 
permitted  to  bathe  in  the  snmmer,  onee  each  we^  for  ten  minutes 
at  a  time.** 


•B.  p. 


D.  8^  1827.  p.  lOS. 


CHAPTER  XV 


CONNECTICUT 

With  the  hoilding  of  the  new  State  prisGn  at  Wedmifiilil  in  IffiG 
and  1827,  and  with  the  appointment  of  Moses  C.  Pfldnuyy  fmjaulj 
warden  of  the  New  Hampshire  State  Prison,  as  warden,  Conneeti- 
cnt  entered  upon  a  period  of  prison  adminirtration  tbat  m  Ins  tfcan 
twenty  years  brought  to  it  the  icpntatkn  of-  being  iMe  "pattcm 
prison  of  the  Anbom  plan."^  The  new  prison 
October  1,  1827.* 

The  contrast  with  Old  Newgate^  histiKy  and 
striking.  Jnst  as  Old  Newgate  at  Si—tbyijF  had  been  a  Slate 
scandal  and  a  constant  financial  bnrdeB,  ao  now  Wedmsfidd  gvev 
to  be  the  pride  of  the  State  and  far  niMPe  Hun  a  adlf-«^porting 
institation.  The  new  Comeetieiit  pi 
and  then  passed  it  in  the  raee  tor 
prisons.  In  the  increasing^  heated  dJacDiarions  of  the  lelativv 
merits  of  the  Anbum  and  Pennsylvania  systems,  Wethenfidd 
became  ultimately  the  mainstay  of  the  Aalnim  sappotttn.  Its 
fame  traveled  even  to  Europe,  and  ardent  phihisi^hieal 
were  there  made  of  the  principles  of  prism 
by  the  Freneh  and  the  Germans. 

Wethersfidd  prodneed  large  and  eonstnietive 
almost  complct^  the  d^nands  of  the  period  for  a 
It  had  been  eeonomieally  bnih^  the  136  edOs  on  the  Anhnm  plan 
having  been  erected  for  approximatelT  $30,000,  as  wdi  as  a  keeper's 
house,  hospital,  offices,  and  a  d^artment  for  fenale  eonriels  who 
were  under  charge  of  a  matron,  Mrs.  Gnswold.'  Later  hofhlingB, 
including  workshops,  were  baih  by  the  labor  of  the  eonHets  wi& 
equal  economy.  The  celk  in  the  new  prison  boildiog  were  7  feet 
long,  3  feet  6  inches  wide  and  7  f e^  h^L.  The  boildfing  was  four 
stories  in  hei^t,^  177  feet  long,  48  feet  wide  and  36  feet  high.* 

Wethersfield  s  sucees  was  pnmari(f  due  to  the  two  PilsbaiTs, 
Moses  C.  and  Amos  (bom  in  Londonderry,  N.  H^  in  1805), 
were  wardens  from  the  start  in  1827  until  1S45. 
because  of  ill  health  in  1830  and  his  son  sacceeding 
Pilsbury,  a  native  of  Newberry,  MaHMrhnaetts,  had  been  a 
tenant  in  the  War  of  1812,  and  was  a  sdf-made  man.  He 
warden  of  the  New  Hami>shire  prison  in  1818.  Many  years  later 
he  was  called  the  ^'founder  asd  head  of  improvaMBta  in  o«r 
prisons,  at  least  in  the  New  England  States."* 

Rcvort  •{  Directon.  1S44. 

B.  P.  D.  S^ 
MiB«tcs  •€ 


[1751 


•B.P.  D.  S^lSlf,*.  110. 


•Save,  pu  3. 
•BtecnSiicttl  SketK*  U 
1S49. 


176  History  of  American  Prisons 

*'TMs  accomplished  disciplinarian,  whose  mere  look  was  suflacient  to  quell 
the  fiercest  of  these  hardened  creatures  with  whom  he  had  to  deal,  was  a  man 
of  medium  stature,  calm  and  gentle  in  aspect  and  demeanor,  full  of  tender- 
ness and  human  sympathy. ' ' ' 

Moses  Pilsbury  's  reputation  was  made  largely  in  Concord,  where 
he  maintained  the  State  prison  of  New  Hampshire  on  a  paying 
basis,  both  before  and  after  his  service  in  Connecticut.  He  was 
said  to  be  the  first  warden  who  made  a  prison  more  than  self-sup- 
porting, and  who  read  the  Bible  daily  to  the  prisoners  assembled. 
He  died  in  Derry,  N.  H.,  in  1848,  aged  70. 

Amos  Pilsbury,  when  but  nineteen  years  of  age,  was  appointed 
watchman  and  guard  'at  the  New  Hampshire  State  Prison  in  1824, 
and  became  deputy  warden  the  following  year.  With  his  father 
he  went  to  Connecticut  in  1827,  holding  the  position  of  deputy 
warden  in  Wethersfield  also.     In  1830  he  was  appointed  warden. 

Two  dominant  characteristics  were  prominent  in  Amos  Pilsbury 's 
long  wardenship.  He  created  a  remarkably  lucrative  prison  for 
Connecticut,  and  he  established  and  developed  a  clear-cut  system 
of  prison  discipline.  The  two  Pilsburys  achieved  the  reputation 
of  being  the  best  prison  keepers  in  the  world.*  Of  the  two,  Amos 
became  far  better  known,  his  career  in  Wethersfield  being  succeeded 
by  similar  service  in  the  Albany  penitentiary. 

We  find  in  Amos  Pilsbury  the  first  noted  professional  prison 
warden,  with  a  system  that  for  the  time  was  enlightened  and 
constructive.  Captain  Lynds  of  Sing  Sing  and  Auburn  was  in 
the  business  of  running  a  prison,  but  we  do  not  gain  from  him  a 
penal  philosophy.  Moreover,  Lynds  was  a  man  of  cruelty,  and  of 
limited  vision.  Pilsbury  was  the  first  to  exemplify  through  a 
relatively  long  period  of  administrative  activity  that  wardens  are 
made,  and  not  simply  born  of  political  will  or  favor.  He  was  a 
salient  and  dominant  figure  at  a  time  when  prison  administration 
was  developing  into  a  profession,  and  prison  discipline  into  a 
system.  He  was  thus  described,  in  1840,  by  a  writer  in  the  Phila- 
delphia Courier,  who  claimed  to  have  studied  as  many  peniten- 
tiaries as  any  man  of  his  age : 

**  Captain  Pilsbury  has  the  true  system  of  management.  It  is  the  mild 
system,  that  which  appeals  to  the  better  instead  of  the  worst  feelings  of 
human  nature.  He  seldom  punishes,  but  when  he  does  he  takes  special  pains 
to  show  the  criminal  that  he  regards  him  as  an  unfortunate  human  being,  not 
as  a  brute.     Here  is  the  mistake  made  in  other  penitentiaries. ' ' " 

Of  '*  Captain '^  Pilsbury,  as  he  was  called,  there  exist  several 
stories.  A  certain  desperate  convict  named  Scott  was  serving  a 
term  of  fifteen  years  at  Wethersfield.  He  at  one  time  cut  off  one 
hand  to  avoid  work,  but  was  immediately  attended  to  and  in  an 
hour  was  turning  a  large  crank  with  the  other  hand.  Pilsbury 
wrote  in  1835 :  ^^ 

"Convicts  cannot  be  managed  as  they  should  be  unless  they  know  for  a 
certainty  that  punishment  will  be  inflicted  for  the  violation  of  the  rules  of 
the  prison.     The  State  prison  is  designed  to  be  a  place  of  punishment." 

'  Op.  Cit.,  p.  8. 

8  Sketch  of  American  Prisons   (Year  1860),  p.  16. 
»  Biographical  Sketch  of  Amos  Pilsbury,  p.  9. 
!» Report  of  Directors,  p.  16. 


History  of  American  Prisons  177 

Crawford  in  1832  found  Wethersfield  not  using  corporal  punish- 
ment, yet  discipline  was  well  enforced.  The  penalties  were  solitary- 
confinement  in  a  darkened  cell,  and  reduction  in  diet.  The  prison 
was  said  to  be  extremely  well  managed,  and  great  attention  seemed 
to  be  paid  to  the  moral  and  religious  instruction  of  prisoners. 

Yet,  firm  as  Pilsbury  was  with  the  prisoners,  he  gave  evidences 

of  believing  also  in  the  sense  of  honor  in  at  least  some  prisoners. 

A  committee  of  inquiry  reported,  in  1835,  that  when  both  the 

Pilsburys  were  at  Wethersfield,  the  male  convicts  who  were  in  their 

employ,  probably  as  domestic  servants,  were  permitted  to  go  out 

of  the  prison  and  about  the  town  of  Wethersfield. 

''On  one  or  more  instances  the  convicts,  to  the  number  of  three  or  four, 
at  a  time,  were  sent  with  a  guard  to  Hartford  in  a  boat.  ...  It  might 
be  to  show  the  extent  of  moral  restraint,  which  these  wardens  had  the  tact 
to  impose  upon  their  prisoners.  Let  the  cause  be  what  it  may,  the  Committee 
report  it  as  an  error  which  has  not  often  been,  and  probably  never  will  again 
be,  repeated. ' ' " 

The  story  is  exceedingly  interesting  to  the  student,  for  it  is  the 
earliest  instance  we  have  found  in  the  new  system  of  anything 
approaching  the  ' '  trusty ' '  system  of  dealing  with  specific  prisoners, 
picked  for  their  apparent  trustworthiness.  It  became  ultimately 
customary  in  the  State  prisons  to  trust  a  few  picked  inmates,  to 
give  them  positions  of  a  certain  diminished  responsibility  to  enable 
them  to  enjoy  certain  favors  not  granted  the  other  inmates.  Out 
of  the  trusty  system  grew  finally  the  honor  system,  in  which  the 
trust  is  spread  by  the  warden  over  larger  groups,  and  in  which  the 
self-respect  and  the  self-expression  of  the  inmate  is  given  a  much 
larger  field. 

In  the  case  of  the  inmates  taken  by  the  guard  in  a  boat  to 
Hartford  several  miles  away,  there  may  have  been  even  little  of  the 
trusty  element,  for  a  guard  accompanied  them.  But  it  is  recorded, 
as  above  stated,  that  inmates  were  allowed  to  go  about  the  town 
of  Wethersfield.  And  this  young  warden  had  courage  and  confi- 
dence, as  is  illustrated  by  the  following  anecdote-  ^^ 

''Captain  Pilsbury  on  one  occasion  was  told  that  a  prisoner  who  had  been 
recently  committed  had  sworn  to  kill  him  and  that  he  had  actually  sharpened 
his  razor  for  that  purpose.  Without  hesitancy  he  sent  for  the  man  to  come  to 
his  ofl&ce. 

"  'I  wish  you  to  shave  me,'  said  the  warden,  and  seating  himself  added, 
'Here  is  all  the  apparatus.'  The  man  pleaded  want  of  skill.  'Never  mind,' 
said  the  warden,  'you  are  not  intractable,  and  you  will  soon  learn,  and  I  in- 
tend you  to  perform  my  toilet  duties  daily.' 

"The  man  with  trembling  hands  went  to  work;  he  performed  the  shaving 
poorly,  for  he  was  wholly  disarmed  and  was  trembling  more  from  fear, 
blended  with  growing  confidence  in  the  warden,  than  for  the  continuance  of 
his  fell  purpose  to  take  his  life. 

"When  asked  the  next  day  why  he  did  not  cut  his  throat  while  he  was 
shaving  him,  as  he  said  he  would,  he  exclaimed:  '  May  God  forgive  me,  but 
I  did  intend  to  kill  you  if  I  could  have  found  an  opportunity,  but  now  my 
hatred  is  broken  down  t » *  i» 

"  Report  of  Committee  on  State  Prisons,  1833,  p,  17. 
"Biographical  Sketch,  p.  9. 
I'' Biographical  Sketch,  p.  10. 


178  History  of  American  Prisons 

Several  variants  of  this  story  are  worth  recording,  as  evidencing 
other  angles  of  this  noteworthy  early  illustration  of  the  applica- 
tion, on  the  one  side,  of  the  trusty  system,  and  on  the  other  of  plain 
''grit"  and  confidence  on  the  part  of  the  prison  warden.  Miss 
Martineau,  in  her  ' '  Society  in  America. ' '  ^®  places  on  the  warden 's 
lips  the  words:  ''I  have  been  told  that  you  meant  to  murder  me, 
but  I  thought  I  might  trust  you. "  "  God  bless  you,  sir,  you  may ! '  ^ 
replied  the  regenerated  man.  The  chronicler  of  the  Philadelphia 
Courier  states  that  neither  version  was  quite  correct,  but  that  the 
warden,  hearing  from  prisoners  that  they  were  afraid  to  be  shaved 
by  the  desperate  criminal,  who  was  the  same  Scott  that  afterwards 
cut  off  his  hand,  took  his  seat  in  the  barber 's  chair,  with  the  outcome 
as  above  told.  And  within  the  last  few  months  the  writer  of  this 
study  has  heard  a  very  similar  story  attributed  to  a  former  warden 
and  a  barber  in  Sing  Sing  Prison. 

The  board  of  directors  in  1831  indicated  the  policy  of  the  prison 
administration :  ^* 

"Corporal  punishment  is  rare,  but  mistaken  kindness  is  bad  for  a  certain 
class  of  convicts.  The  comfort  of  the  convicts  should  not  be  so  studied  as 
to  render  the  prison  a  desirable  residence.  When  this  becomes  the  case,  our 
criminal  code  becomes  a  bounty  law  for  crime."  .  .  .  "The  Legisla- 
ture never  intended  that  the  appetites  of  the  convicts  should  be  consulted  in 
the  variety  of  the  food  provided  for  them. 

Miss  Martineau 's  book  records  graphically  several  other  stories 
of  the  humanness  and  administrative  sagacity  of  Pilsbury.  It  is 
stated  that  a  certain  incorrigible  negro  was  permitted  to  be  on  the 
''range"  of  cells,  on  agreement  that  the  warden  and  the  negro 
would  trust  each  other.  Finally,  however,  the  warden  had  to  take 
him  to  a  solitary  cell,  because  he  did  not  live  up  to  his  pledge  to 
behave.    On  the  way  to  the  cell,  Pilsbury  said  to  the  negro : 

"Do  you  think  you  been  fair  with  me?" 

The  negro  burst  into  tears,  and  Pilsbury,  believing  in  the  negro's 
remorse,  gave  him  again  the  free  range  of  the  cellhouse.  He 
reformed  entirely. 

An  inmate  of  the  prison  sought  to  escape,  and  sprained  his  ankle 
in  his  unsuccessful  attempt.  Pilsbury  did  not  chide  him,  but 
actually  in  the  middle  of  the  night  arose  and  made  the  prisoner's 
ankle  comfortable  with  the  warden's  own  pillow.  Again  reforma- 
tion was  reported  to  have  ensued. 

To  the  writer  of  this  study,  Mrs.  Butler,  daughter  of  Zebulon  R. 
Brockway,  said  in  July,  1921,  that  when  she  was  younger,  it  was 
a  byword  in  the  Brockway  family  that  when  a  certain  fixed  and 
intense  look  came  over  Mr.  Brockway  or  one  of  the  others  in  the 
family,  it  was  "the  Pilsbury  eye." 

It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  Wethersfield,  under  Amos 
Pilsbury,  was  the  training  school  and  standardizer  of  the  system 
of  prison  discipline  that  flourished  in  American  prisons  throughout 
the  nineteenth  century,  and  out  of  which  developed  the  American 
reformatory  system.     The  connection  is  direct  and  clear.     It  was 

i*B.  p.  D.  S.,  1831,  p.  520. 

"Martineau.     Society  in  America,  Vol.  II,  p.  282. 


History  of  American  Prisons  179 

not  from  Auburn  and  Sing  Sing  that  the  lessons  came,  but  from 
Wethersfield,  and  from  Amos  Pilsbury,  who  engaged  Zebulon  R. 
Brockway  as  a  clerk  in  Wethersfield  Prison  in  1848.  Brockway 
went  with  Pilsbury  to  the  Albany  Penitentiary  from  1851  to  1853. 
Brockway  has  written  in  his  autobiography : ' '  Fifty  Years  of  Prison 
Service, ' '  ^'^  that  the  Pilsbury  system  of  prison  management,  exem- 
plified first  at  Wethersfield,  as  related  to  the  economies  and 
discipline,  constituted  a  sound  and  invaluable  basis  for  building  the 
* '  Ideal  Prison  system  for  a  State, ' '  an  article  which  Mr.  Brockway 
read  at  the  first  National  Prison  Congress  at  Cincinnati  in  1870, 
a  basis  which  Mr.  Brockway  also  naturally  built  upon  when,  six 
years  later,  he  became  the  first  superintendent  of  the  New  York 
State  Reformatory  at  Elmira. 
Mr.  Brockway  wrote : 

**The  stringent  discipline  maintained  by  the  Pilsburys  is  necessary  for  the 
desirable  institutional  and  individual  prison  economies;  reformatory  dis- 
ciplinary training  devoid  of  some  friction  is  by  that  sign  shown  to  be 
fallacious. ' ' 

One  day,  Mr.  Pilsbury,  accompanied  by  the  board  of  directors  of 
the  prison,  entered  the  shoeshop,  the  discipline  of  which  had  been 
demoralized  during  Mr.  Pilsbury 's  absence,  while  he  was  suspended 
on  charges,  from  which  he  was  later  absolved.  The  prisoners  arose 
from  their  seats,  armed  with  their  shoe  knives,  and  demanded  that 
Mr.  Pilsbury  leave  the  shop.  This  he  refused  to  do,  telling  the 
prisoners  that  though  at  that  moment  he  had  no  authority  over 
them,  he  would  not  leave  until  they  had  returned  to  their  work. 
**His  bold  attitude  and  strong  personality  so  dominated  them  that 
one  by  one  the  men,  including  their  leader  and  spokesman,  resumed 
their  seats  and  their  work,"  wrote  Mr.  Brockway,^^  who  adds  that 
shortly  after  this  event,  Mr.  Pilsbury,  on  a  visit  to  Sing  Sing, 
discovered  the  instrument  known  as  the  cat-o'-nine  tails,  which  he 
brought  back  to  Wethersfield,  applied  to  the  first  disturber  on  the 
following  morning,  and  restored  thereby  as  if  by  magic  good  order, 
industrial  efficiency  and  salutary  discipline.  The  cat  was  rarely 
used  afterwards. 

The  charges  against  the  administration  of  Mr.  Pilsbury  were 
investigated  by  a  Legislative  Committee  in  1832,  and  were  typical 
of  similar  allegations  against  prison  executives  rising  from  time 
to  time  in  other  States.  Briefly,  it  was  claimed  that  the  accounts 
were  not  kept  according  to  law ;  that  the  prisoners  were  not  getting 
enough  food ;  that  for  several  weeks  they  were  furnished  with  bad 
water ;  that  they  suffered  from  cold  and  bad  air ;  that  the  sick  were 
treated  with  great  cruelty ;  that  the  by-laws  were  disregarded ;  that 
there  were  depredations  upon  public  property;  that  the  prisoners 
were  illegally  punished,  and  that  prisoners  were  permitted  to  leave 
the  prison. 

In  general,  the  charges  were  either  ''not  proved"  or  ''ex- 
plained."   However,  as  cited  above,  there  were  instances  in  which 

"Fifty  Years  of  Prison  Service,  p.  34. 
"Fifty  Years  of  Prison  Service,  p.  29. 


180  History  of  American  Prisons 

the  convicts  had  been  used  outside  the  prison.    A  novel  comment 
of  the  Committee  follows: 

**The  Committee  is  persuaded  that  the  convict,  when  once  in  his  cell,  en- 
joys as  much  of  warmth  and  purity  (of  air)  as  are  to  be  found  in  the  well- 
filled  tenement  of  a  crowded  city,  and  at  no  time  does  he  suffer  more 
hardship  than  an  ordinary  seaman  on  a  voyage. ' ' " 

When  Mr.  Pilsbury  was  reappointed  by  a  new  board  of  directors, 
in  1833,  the  board  reported  that  the  prisoners  had  sought  to 
dictate  the  appointment  of  a  new  warden.  They  presented  a  man- 
datory petition  to  the  new  directors  —  and  there  had  been  a  virtual 
mutiny  in  the  shoe  shop.  They  had  threatened  that  if  certain 
officers  were  appointed,  they  would  kill  them.  The  directors,  in 
their  report,  stated  that  this  condition  came  directly  from  the  let- 
ting down  of  unrelenting  and  firm  discipline  during  the  brief 
wardenship  of  a  Mr.  Montague  after  the  suspension  of  Mr.  Pilsbury. 
Under  Montague  the  prisoners  talked,  arranged  plans,  and  the 
underkeepers  traded  with  the  convicts.  There  was  compensation 
for  overwork;  food,  fruit  and  delicacies  were  bought,  and  there 
were  numerous  newspapers  in  the  cells.  Montague  was  removed 
by  the  new  directors  and  Pilsbury  reappointed. 

''Prison  management  by  the  Pilsburys  always  held  predominant  the  aim 
and  the  inspiration  of  the  economies.  Profitable  employment  of  prisoners, 
so  that  the  cost  of  supporting  prisons  should  be  defrayed  out  of  the  products 
of  their  labor,  was  a  tenet  instilled  by  Moses  Pilsbury,  made  remarkably 
effective  by  Amos  Pilsbury  at  Wetherfield  and  Albany,  and  afterwards  by 
his  son  Louis  D.  Pilsbury  in  his  m^knagement  of  the  State  prisons  of  New 
York. ' '  21 

What  were  Amos  Pilsbury 's  conclusions,  toward  the  close  of  his 
first  score  of  years  of  prison  service,  as  to  the  reformative  value  of 
the  system  of  prison  discipline  that  he  had  espoused?  Not  opti- 
mistic.   He  wrote: 

"After  an  experience  of  twenty  years,  I  am  constrained  to  say  that  the 
effect  in  general  has  not  been  to  reform  those  who  in  early  life  have  been 
disposed  to  crime,  even  when  the  best  opportunities  have  been  afforded  to 
them  for  reformation. ' '  ^" 

Dorothea  Dix  wrote  in  1845 : 

"We  claim  too  much  of  our  prisons,  on  whichever  system  established.^ 
We  too  often  judge  convicts  by  false  standards.  We  promise,  through  all 
reformed  prison  systems,  too  much,  even  under  the  most  favorable  modes  of 
administering  them.  It  is  not  easy  to  correct  a  trivial,  inconvenient  habit, 
for  a  short  time  indulged;  shall  a  whole  life  of  wrong  and  mistake  be  amended 
by  a  few  years  of  imprisonment?" 

Thus  we  find  her  condemning  in  considerable  measure  the  leni- 
ency of  the  Massachusetts  system,  which  was  based  upon  a  belief  in 
this  capacity  for  good  reactions  by  the  convict  to  very  humane 
treatment,  and  also  condoning  the  ineffectiveness  of  all  systems  in 
general,  on  the  ground  that  too  much  is  expected  of  the  prison  as  a 
reformative  institution.    She  has,  we  found,  excused  flogging  when 

18  Report  of  Comm.,  p.  11. 
i»Dix.      Remarks,    p.    18. 

20  Dix.     Remarks,  p.  67. 

21  Fifty  Years  of  Prison  Service,  p.  30. 


History  of  American  Prisons  181 

necessary.  We  cite  quotations  from  her  because  she  was  unusually 
enlightened,  and  yet  unable  to  develop  a  clear  penal  philosophy. 
How  much  less  might  the  wardens  of  the  period,  harassed  by  a 
thousand  cares,  solve  the  increasingly  complex  prison  problems? 

Let  us  turn  to  a  study  of  the  industrial  effectiveness  of  Wethers- 
field.  Old  Newgate,  prior  to  the  establishment  of  Wethersfield,  had 
been  for  years  an  average  expense  to  the  State  of  $5,680.  For  the 
first  six  months  of  the  new  prison,  ending  March  30th,  1828,  there 
was  already  a  surplus  of  $1,017  over  all  costs  of  management  and 
support,  including  the  salaries  of  the  officers.^^  By  1831,  the  prison 
industries  had  earned  a  surplus  of  $17,139,^^  and  if  there  was 
included  the  annual  expense  that  would  have  been  incurred  had 
Old  Newgate  been  continued  instead  of  Wethersfield,  the  State  had 
already  saved  over  $41,000,  or  enough  to  more  than  pay  for  the 
construction  of  the  new  prison.  By  1843,  the  earnings  by  the  prison 
industries,  over  and  above  all  expenses  of  the  prison,  had  amounted 
to  over  $107,000,  which  from  time  to  time  had  been  turned  back 
into  the  State  treasury.^® 

The  women  prisoners  had  been  placed  by  1831  in  separate  cells. 
In  that  year  the  prison  chaplain,  Gerrish  Barrett,  wrote :  ^^ 

**I  suppose  the  female  department  here  is  the  best  arranged  of  any  in  the 
world.  Formerly,  when  they  were  all  in  one  room,  the  noise  they  made  might 
be  heard  at  a  distance;  and  hair,  torn  from  each  others'  heads,  might  be 
seen  strewed  about  the  floor.  Now,  they  are  lodged  in  separate  cells,  more 
than  support  themselves  by  their  labor,  and  are  much  changed  for  the  better 
as  to  their  outward  appearance.*' 

What  it  cost  to  run  a  prison  was  shown  in  the  balance  sheet  for 
1831 : 

Income.  Expenditures. 

Smith $818  96       Provisions  $3,190  60 

Coopers  852  19      Clothing  and  bedding 719  89 

Shoe 4,003  28      Wages,    subsistence,    fuel, 

Nail  527  84  etc 3,037  89 

Carpenters    2,408  52      Hospital   293  78 

Tailors  19  02  

Chair  4,247  94 

Females 45  47 

Interest  13  84 

Charged  for  laborers 594  15 

Visitors  634  97 


Total  expenditures $7,342  16 

Total  15,166  18  Balance  gain $7,824  02 

Out  of  this  capacity  for  earning  a  handsome  surplus  came  to 
Amos  Pilsbury  two  constructive  ideas,  namely,  the  subsidizing, 
from  the  surplus  earnings  of  the  prisoners,  of  the  erection  or 
improvement  of  county  jails,  and  the  erection  of  a  State  asylum 
for  the  insane.  County  jails  in  Connecticut,  as  in  other  States,  were 
places  of  promiscuous  association  and  idleness.    They  possessed  the 

^B.   p.  D.  S.,  1828,  p.  15.  ~ 

^B,  p.  D.  S.,  Vol.  II,  1840. 

»B.  P.  D.  S.,  1831,  p.  470. 

2«B.  P.  D.  S.,  1843,  p.  55. 


182  History  of  American  Prisons 

worst  attributes  of  the  old  type  of  State  prisons,  like  Newgate  in 
New  York.  Moreover,  they  received  the  lesser  offenders,  and  were 
literally  the  feeders  for  the  State  prison. 

There  was  continued  concern  in  the  board  of  directors,  undoubt- 
edly stimulated  thereto  by  the  warden,  as  to  the  reformability  of 
the  convicts,  and  also  as  to  the  possibilities  of  the  prevention  of 
crime  if  approached  early  enough  in  life.  The  directors  in  1836 
found  little  hope  of  reformation  in  the  State  prison  convicts.  They 
cited  numerous  facts  confirming  this  opinion  from  other  States. 
Reformation,  they  held,  came  best  through  preventive  education: 

*'Mere  confinement  will  not  do  it;  their  minds  must  be  improved,  new 
desires  must  be  created,  new  impulses  awakened,  and  they  must  be  made  to 
realize  that  there  are  other  joys  than  the  sensual." 

Hartford  County  had  built  in  1837  a  very  modern  county  jail, 
embodying  the  architectural  and  disciplinary  features  of  Wethers- 
field.  Only  as  the  county  jails  inculcated  the  tested  principles  of 
prison  discipline  into  their  own  administration  could  the  army  of 
recruits  to  the  prison  be  reduced.  In  1840,  Mr.  Pilsbury  proposed 
to  the  General  Assembly  of  Connecticut  that  the  warden  be  author- 
ized to  pay  $1,000  to  each  county  in  Connecticut  that  would  under- 
take to  build  a  county  jail  on  the  plan  of  Hartford  County's 
institution.^"^  This  measure,  carried  in  the  General  Assembly,  was 
designated  by  the  Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society  as  probably  the 
most  important  measure  that  had  ever  been  adopted  in  the  country 
for  the  improvement  of  county  prisons.  The  directors  of  the  State 
prison  were  to  judge  as  to  whether  the  county  prison  had  been 
constructed  in  accordance  with  the  terms  of  the  law.  In  1841, 
the  warden  was  authorized  to  pay  to  Hartford,  New  Haven  and 
New  London  counties  the  bounties  of  $1,000  each.  The  warden  now 
went  further,  and  urged  that  the  surplus  earnings,  to  the  extent  of 
from  $3,000  to  $5,000  a  year,  be  appropriated  to  the  erection  of  an 
asylum  for  the  insane  poor.^^ 

There  were  at  this  time  at  least  six  insane  convicts  at  the  prison. 

As  early  as  1834  the  board  of  directors  had  reported: 

"There  are,  and  ever  have  been,  in  the  prison  a  class  of  convicts  that 
either  from  partial  derangement,  or  deficiency  of  intellect,  or  turbulence,  pre- 
tending to  be  insane,  cannot  at  all  times  be  kept  quiet;  these  sometimes  in 
the  night  season  make  a  noise,  and  by  the  cry  of  fire  or  some  other  alarm, 
greatly  agitate  the  prisoners  around  them  and  disturb  the  whole  establish- 
ment.* The  directors  suggest  a  separate  block  of  cells  for  these,  and  for  the 
useless  and  broken-down  prisoners." 

The  warden  estimated  that  the  insane  poor  in  the  State  were  at 
least  in  the  proportion  of  one  to  every  thousand  of  the  population. 
The  most  dangerous  of  this  group  found  their  way  into  the  State 
and  county  prisons,  into  cells  or  chains,  for  purposes  of  safe 
keeping.    Pilsbury  wrote  in  1841 :  ^ 

**They  are  unfit  subjects  of  punishment,  whether  their  own  good  or  the  good 
of  the  criminal  is  considered,  to  say  nothing  of  humanity  and  public  justice." 

2*B.  P.  D.  S.,  p.  831,  p.  467. 

27  B.  P.  D.   S.,  1841,  p.  52. 

28  Report  of  Directors,  1841,  Warden's  Report,  p.  7. 


History  of  American  Prisons  183 

A  number  of  States  had  already  made  provision  for  the  insane 
poor  and  criminal,  but  none  had  done  so  by  the  earnings  of  the 
criminal  population.  Connecticut's  delay  in  this  provision  would 
be  less  regretted  if  it  should  provide  such  institutional  care  without 
taxing  the  State  treasury  of  the  people. 

In  1844,  the  directors  reported  that  the  subsidizing  of  county 
jails  had  caused  great  improvement  at  Hartford,  New  Haven  and 
Windham,  but  that  in  a  number  of  counties  the  gift  of  $1,000  was 
not  sufficient  to  encourage  counties  to  undertake  the  very  consider- 
able expenditures  necessary  to  the  erection  of  a  new  county  jail. 
Therefore,  it  would  be  well  to  distribute  the  surplus  earnings  of 
the  prison  to  each  and  every  county : 

**Then  the  State  will  have  not  only  the  pattern  prison  on  the  Auburn  plan, 
but  also  a  modern  county  jail  in  every  county  of  the  State. ' '  ^ 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  clear  that  Pilsbury  had  not  arrived  at 
the  point,  in  his  penal  philsosphy,  of  giving  to  the  prisoners  a  share 
of  their  own  earnings.  It  is  a  significant  statement  of  Brockway,^* 
that  Amos  Pilsbury,  in  his  sick  room  at  Albany,  just  before  his 
death,  expressed  with  deep  feeling  his  regret  that  he  ever  paid  into 
the  public  treasury  the  earnings  of  prisoners  instead  of  using  such 
surplus  funds  for  the  prisoners'  benefit.  But,  in  the  height  of  the 
Wethersfield  operations,  thirty  years  before,  the  intellectual  or 
social  welfare  of  the  prisoners  still  counted  little  as  against  the 
financial  advantages  accruing  to  the  State. 

We  have  from  the  prison  chaplain,  Gerrish  Barrett,  in  1831,  a 
picture  of  the  intellectual  capacity  of  the  inmates  at  that  time :  ^ 

"No  convict  now  in  this  prison  received  a  liberal  education.  Very  few 
have  come  under  Sabbath  School  instruction.  76  are  unable  to  write;  106 
out  of  141  fail  of  spelling  many  words  of  1  or  2  syllables.  30  cannot  read; 
60  out  of  150  were  separated  from  parents  before  they  were  10  years  old, 
and  36  others  before  15  years  old." 

The  age  of  the  prison  population  seems  to  have  been  in  these 
years  strikingly  young  on  the  average.  In  1829,  it  was  reported 
that  of  the  134  prisoners,  102  were  under  30,  and  24  were  short  of 
20  years. 

"We  need  some  provision  for  correction  and  reformation  of  juvenile 
offenders,  and  punishment  of  minor  offenses.  Such  offenses  now  go  un- 
punished often  because  of  lack  of  proper  punishments." 

In  1835  there  were  further  findings  of  Brewer : 

"Few  prisoners  in  early  life  had  good  examples  or  proper  instruction. 
One-half  the  whole  number  were  deprived  of  homes  before  they  were  ten 
years  old.  Accounts  of  villainy  in  newspapers  stimulate  some  to  crime  — 
also  the  liking  for  notoriety. 

"Lazy  habits,  roving  dispositions,  \'iolent  shocks  of  mind,  such  as  love  of 
gambling,  are  frequent  preludes  to  their  careers.  The  hardened  convicts  have 
not  had  their  stubborn  wills  subdued  in  boyhood. 

"There  is  a  close  connection  between  crime  and  the  absence  of  moral 
pledges  and  domestic  links.  About  half  the  convicts  have  no  parents  alive. 
138  of  the  200  never  married.    Of  62  married,  half  were  not  living  with  their 

» Report  of  Directors,  1844. 

»>  Fifty  Years  of  Prison  Life,  p.  33. 

»«B.  P.  D.  S.,  1831,  p.  475. 


184  History  of  American  Prisons 

wives  at  the  time  of  committing  crime.  Three-fourths  of  the  convicts  have 
been  intemperate.  Ignorance  and  crime  are  closely  connected.  No  temperate 
and  industrious  follower  of  a  trade,  or  similarly  constituted  head  of  a  family 
or  owner  of  real  estate,  was  found  among  the  200  convicts.  Not  one  of  the 
200  received  a  collegiate  or  classical  education.  Only  17  out  of  the  200  could 
write  or  cipher  as  far  as  the  single  rule  of  three. ' '  ** 

In  1841,  Josiah  Brewer,  the  resident  chaplain,  asked  rather 
timidly  if  there  were  not  too  much  attention  paid  to  pecuniary- 
advantages,  and  not  enough  to  intellectual  help  in  the  prison  dis- 
cipline. And  Dorothea  Dix  wrote  in  1845  that  ''the  chief  defect 
in  Wethersfield  is  the  too  little  time  given  to  moral  instruction,  and 
too  little  time  to  the  prisoners  for  reading  and  self -improvement.*^ 

A  committee  of  inquiry  in  1842  found  a  life  of  deadly  monotony 
the  prisoner 's  portion : 

*'The  voluntary  laborer  works  for  himself,  and  has  holidays  for  recreation. 
The  prisoner  works  for  others.  His  variety  is  from  cell  to  work  bench  and 
from  work  bench  to  cell.  His  relaxation  for  six  days  is  to  march  across  the 
same  yard,  work  at  the  same  bench,  return  to  the  same  cell,  to  eat  his  meals 
from  the  same  kit,  sit  on  the  same  stool,  and  lie  in  the  same  bunk.  He  rises 
and  lies  down,  goes  in  and  goes  out,  moves  and  stands  still,  begins  work  and 
quits  work,  always  under  authority,  never  from  free  choice,  except  a  choice 
of  evils.'''"' 

In  this  year,  the  chaplain  became  more  insistent.  He  wanted 
a  school  for  the  younger  criminals  in  prison,  one-fourth  of  the 
entire  prison  population  was  under  21  years  of  age ;  some  of  them 
were  just  entering  their  teens!  The  chaplain  won  his  case  from 
the  directors.  In  1843  the  directors  extolled  the  unusual  efforts 
they  had  made  to  instruct  the  younger  convicts.  There  was  now  a 
Bible  and  reading  class  of  30  inmates  under  the  age  of  21  on  Sun- 
day taught  by  the  warden,  chaplain  and  clerk. 

Two  of  the  chaplains  at  Wethersfield,  Gerrish  Barrett  and  Josiah 
Brewer,  possessed  analytical,  constructive,  and  deeply  religious 
minds.  Particularly  was  Gerrish  Barrett  a  lover  of  character 
analysis.  He  has  left  some  very  interesting  and  graphic  studies  of 
prisoners  in  the  long-forgotten  chaplain's  annual  reports  of 
Wethersfield.     Some  of  his  observations  follow  :^^ 

Men  sleep  more,  dream  more,  have  stronger  craving  for  food  and  time  past 
seems  to  be  shorter,  and  time  to  come  longer  in  prison  than  when  at  liberty. 

It  is  always  found  that  open  acts  of  crime  are  preceded  by  smaller  and 
secret  offenses;  and  seldom  is  one  convicted  of  crime  whose  life  had  been 
regular  till  he  was  18  or  20  years  old. 

Some  in  prison  make  singular  development  of  the  social  principle.  They 
can  hardly  be  prevailed  upon  to  kill,  or  even  to  frighten,  the  rats  and  mice 
that  happen  to  come  into  their  cells.  They  are  pleased  with  their  company, 
love  to  look  at  their  bright  eyes,  and  see  them  jump  about  the  cell.  By  a 
peculiar  noise  which  they  make,  they  call  them  to  the  mouth  of  the  ventila- 
tors, and  there  divide  their  food  with  them.  Yet  these  same  men  have  so 
little  true  benevolence  that  if  at  liberty  they  would  probably  not  respect  the 
property,  if  they  did  the  person,  of  their  fellow  man. 

Some  pass  their  lonely  hours  in  singing  to  themselves  without  audible 
sound.     They  can  judge  of  the  measure,  harmony  and  melody  of  a  piece  of 

31  Dix,     Remarks,  p.  22. 

32  Report  of  Comm.  on  State  Prisons,  1842,  p.  41. 
8*  B.  P.  D.  S.,  183B,  p.  876. 

35  B.    P.   D.    S.,    1837,   p.    128. 


History  of  American  Prisons  185 

music,  and  highly  relish  its  performance,  by  merely  causing  imaginary  sounds 
to  pass  through  their  minds.  They  lie  awake  at  night,  enjoying  sweet  sounds 
of  silent  melody. 

Much  the  greater  portion  of  convicts  are  not  only  ignorant  but  ex- 
tremely grovelling  and  sensual.  Their  prevailing  sentiments  are  the  sexual, 
and  these  are  extremely  gross.  They  spend  hours  in  the  silence  and  solitude 
of  their  cells,  forming  in  their  minds  pictures  of  these  acts  of  sin.  .  .  . 
It  may  be  predicted  with  considerable  certainty  what  course  of  conduct  a 
convict  will  pursue  after  leaving  prison,  if  it  can  be  ascertained  what  were 
Ms  prevailing  thoughts  and  feelings  while  in  prison. 

A  bad  man,  if  left  to  himself,  is  not  likely  to  grow  better. 

As  a  spider  weaves  its  web  from  its  own  bowels,  so  will  many  criminals 
weave  schemes  of  future  villainy  from  the  prevailing  and  most  agreeable 
oxercises  of  their  own  souls. 

Convicts  are  men,  and  differ  in  moral  character  like  other  men.  Some  give 
^ood  evidence  of  being  reformed,  some  doubtful  evidence,  and  some,  most 
miserable,  seem  to  have  wandered  beyond  the  precincts  of  hope. 

Reformation  takes  place  in  different  degrees. 

The  number  discharged  from  the  prison  since  its  beginning  does  not  vary 
greatly  from  400.  Of  that  number  I  should  think  I  had  heard  from  about 
one-quarter,  exclusive  of  those  who  have  made  themselves  notorious  by  a 
repetition  of  their  criminal  offenses.  Excepting  those  last  named,  I  do  not 
know  of  more  than  three  or  four  whose  conduct  is  not  represented  as  being 
better  than  it  was  before  their  imprisonment. 

It  is  curious  to  observe  what  strong  terms  of  reprobation  convicts,  once 
lovers  of  rum,  often,  when  sober  and  in  solitude,  heap  upon  rumsellers. 

These  are  refreshingly  sagacious  and  careful  observations,  made 
at  a  time  when  there  was  still  very  little  published  regarding  the 
convict  as  an  individual.  These  commentaries  were  the  forerunner 
of  the  later  studies  by  chaplains  of  the  habits  and  characteristics 
of  the  prison  populations.  The  chaplains  were  not  medical  men, 
and  we  shall  find  that  the  physicians,  like  Doctor  Franklin  Bache 
in  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  of  Pennsylvania,  contributed  more 
scientific  studies  of  the  inmates.  But  the  chaplain  was  close  to  the 
men,  and  sensed  more  than  did  the  warden  and  the  other  officers 
the  intensely  human  side  of  the  inmate's  life  and  aspirations.  It 
is  from  the  chaplains  and  the  physicians  and  the  prison  reform 
organizations,  in  this  period,  that  we  derive  most  of  the  still  ele- 
mentary interpretation  of  the  psychology  of  the  inmate  population. 
The  wardens  and  the  boards  of  inspectors  seem  to  have  been  too 
busy  with  the  administrative  details  to  regard  the  prison  problem 
as  fundamentally  one  of  human  beings  rather  than  of  machinery, 
industry,  and  efficiency. 

Gerrish  Barrett  left  Wethersfield  in  1839,  to  become  a  traveling 
agent  of  the  Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society.  He  was  one  of  the 
earliest  acute  observers  of  the  physical  and  mental  reactions  of 
inmates  to  confinement.  His  successor,  Josiah  Brewer,  who  secured 
the  educational  classes  for  juveniles,  was  but  three  years  at  the 
prison. 

Not  until  1841  do  we  find  the  ** mechanics"  of  Connecticut  suffi- 
ciently stirred  by  the  competition  of  prison-made  goods  in  the 
open  market  to  cause  the  Legislature  to  investigate.  So  similar  are 
the  items  of  the  petitions  of  the  mechanics  to  those  that  had  for 
some  years  found  their  way  into  the  New  York  Legislature,  that 
the  stimulus  is  easily  traced.     The  mechanics  claimed  that  the 


186  History  of  American  Prisons 

prison-made  goods  interfered  with  business,  and  caused  industrial 
prostration  in  some  cases ;  that  the  prisons  were  entirely  supported 
by  certain  classes  of  mechanical  trades,  as  a  result  of  this  successful 
competition;  that  there  should  be  a  law  against  the  continuation 
or  introduction  of  any  business  that  was  carried  on  elsewhere  in 
the  State,  except  in  articles  for  the  consumption  of  the  prison  or  of 
other  State  institutions.  An  exception  might  be  made  in  the  case 
of  articles,  nine-tenths  of  which  were  supplied  by  foreign  importa- 
tion. Furthermore,  no  convict  should  be  henceforth  leased  to  any 
individual  or  company.  No  keeper  or  other  individual  should  be 
interested  in  any  contract.  No  steam  engine  or  other  power 
for  propelling  machinery  should  be  introduced  into  the  prison.  All 
goods  manufactured  in  prison  should  be  marked  or  labelled  as 
from  the  institution. 

The  Legislative  committee's  analysis  showed,  of  a  population  of 
196  convicts,  employments  as  follows: 

On  Contracts. 

Shoemaking,  at  37 ^^  cents 25 

Chairmaking,  varnishing  and  finishing,  at  35  to  40  cents 35 

Eule  making,  at  40  cents 12 

Table  cutlery,  at  45  cents 25 

97         97 
For  the  State. 

Chair  seat  frames 12 

Knotting,  splitting  and  shaving  cane 20 

Chair  seating  50 

Making  palm  leaf  hats    (women) '. 5 

Making  cigars   (men) 2 

89         89 

186 


A  great  variety  of  trades  had  been  introduced  and  discontinued 
at  various  times,  such  as: 


Wagon   making. 

Brittania  spoons. 

Chisels. 

Nail  making. 

Hammers. 

Screw  plate. 

Clock  carving. 

Cooperage. 

Eifles  and  rifle  pistols. 

Shovels  and  forks. 

Tailoring. 

Carriage  springs. 

Whips. 

Spectacles. 

Sledges. 

The  Legislative  committee  agreed  with  the  mechanics  that  in 
certain  industries  the  injury  was  serious.  Shoe  making  did  not 
seem  to  injure  seriously,  but  chair  making  and  rule  making  worked 
great  hardship.  Table  cutlery  was  largely  a  foreign  product,  and 
was  admissible  in  the  prison. 

The  first  introduction  into  the  prison  of  a  mechanical  trade» 
reported  the  committee,  resulted  for  some  time  afterward  in  a 
greater  injury  than  was  commonly  supposed.  Without  the  inter- 
ferences of  prison  labor,  private  enterprise  adjusts  itself  to  supply 
and  demand.  Prison  labor  causes  the  withdrawal  of  private  busi- 
ness in  some  cases,  which  leads  to  the  withdrawal  of  capital,  the 


History  of  American  Prisons  187 

interruption  of  profits,  and  loss  of  wages  and  skill  to  the  workmen. 
The  changes  of  trades  in  prison  lead  to  a  dislocation  of  the  equili- 
brium of  production  and  to  injury  to  those  in  the  trades. 

The  amount  of  injury  depends  upon  the  extent  and  proportion 
of  the  interference.  When  a  small  number  of  workmen  can  supply 
a  trade,  the  interference  of  prison  labor  is  very  serious.  The 
absolute  amount  of  injury  will  be  greater  than  the  oversupply 
caused  by  the  prison  operations.  Ten  per  cent,  of  excess  of  a 
commodity  will  reduce  prices  much  more  than  ten  per  cent.  There- 
fore, if  the  prison  industries  cause  an  oversupply,  the  mechanics 
and  others  lose  more  than  the  State  gains. 

These  facts  were  not  earlier  discovered,  because  the  industrial 
system  in  the  prisons  is  of  modern  date.  Nor  was  it  so  effective  as 
it  now  was,  went  on  the  committee's  report,  and  machinery  had 
not  been  introduced  to  such  an  extent.  Employers  do  not  protest 
so  long  as  their  business  is  reasonably  profitable,  but  only  when 
the  competition  becomes  keen,  and  profits  fail.  People  at  large 
must  also  be  informed  and  be  convinced,  before  a  grievance  will 
be  redressed.  These  were  all  reasons  why  the  matter  had  not  come 
earlier  to  a  head. 

The  committee  found  that  the  frequent  changes  in  industries  at 
the  prison  had  been  injurious  to  mechanics,  and  of  no  benefit  to  the 
State  or  to  the  convicts,  and  should  not  be  allowed.  Many  suitable 
articles  of  foreign  make  might  be  produced  at  the  prisons.  The 
-committee  did  not  specify  the  particular  articles  to  be  made.  That 
was  a  matter  for  the  warden  and  the  directors  to  determine. 
Chair  making  and  rule  making  should  be  discontinued.  Trades  in 
the  prisons  should  be  limited  to  those  that  would  not  interfere 
seriously  with  the  mechanics.  No  mechanical  trade  should  be 
introduced  henceforth  into  the  prison  except  for  the  manufacturing 
of  articles,  the  chief  supply  of  which  should  be  imported  from 
abroad.  So  far  as  possible  the  prison  should  make  articles  for  the 
prison  and  other  State  institutions;  prisoners  might  be  employed 
at  trades  that  they  had  learned  and  practiced  before  coming  to 
prison. 

The  committee  did  not  favor  the  contract  system,  which  afforded 
a  chance  for  favoritism  on  the  part  of  the  warden,  and  collusion 
between  the  contractor  and  the  overseers,  in  order  to  get  more  work 
out  of  the  prisoners.  Overseers  might  easily  have  a  secret  interest 
in  the  contract,  or  receive  perquisites.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
contractors  took  the  burden  off  the  shoulders  of  the  State.  Con- 
tractors had  to  furnish  stock  and  sell  the  product.  They  lessened 
the  amount  of  State  capital  invested,  lessened  the  bother  and 
hazards  of  purchases,  sales  and  debts,  and  also  decreased  the  labor 
and  responsibility  of  the  warden. 

The  committee  recommended  that  hereafter  the  contracts  should 
not  be  made  for  the  labor  of  the  prisoners,  but  for  the  purchase 
by  the  contractors  of  the  finished  work  of  the  prisoners.  Also,  that 
ample  notice  of  all  pending  contracts  should  be  given. 

Dorothea  Dix,  analyzing  this  prison  in  1845,  found  the  institu- 
tion, for  all  its  excellent  system,  aiming  not  merely  to  make  the 


188  History  of  American  Prisons 

prison  support  itself,  which  in  her  opinion  all  prisons  should  do, 
but  to  render  also  convict  labor,  and  the  exhibition  of  the  convicts 
to  the  public,  a  source  of  profit  to  the  State.®®  This  custom  pre- 
vailed in  all  the  prisons  of  the  Auburn  type  in  the  Northern  States, 
as  indicated  by  the  following  typical  facts : 

Visitors'  fees  at  Auburn  prison  in  1842  were  $1,692.75,  in  1845,  $1,942.75. 
In  two  years,  this  indicates  visits  of  14,542  persons  at  25  cents  per  person. 

Visitors  to  Sing  Sing  prison  in  1843  paid  $311.75,  and  in  1844,  $236.62, 
makiiig  2,194  visitors. 

Income  from  visitors  for  two  years  at  Charlestown,  Massachusetts  State 
prison,  $1,487.75,  or  5,951  persons. 

Visitors'  fees  in  1843  and  1844  at  Wethersfield,  a  total  of  $548.12^^  cents, 
indicating  at  least  2,192  visitors. 

At  Windsor,  Vermont,  in  one  year,  796  visitors. 

At  the  New  Hampshire  State  prison,  in  one  year,  500  visitors. 

At  the  Ohio  State  prison,  in  Columbus,  in  1844,  receipts  of  $1,038  from 
visitors.'' 

The  prisons  have  always  been  made,  in  a  way,  show  places,  and 
the  fee  of  a  shilling  or  ''two  bits,"  imposed  upon  the  curiosity 
seeker,  was  probably  partly  for  the  purpose  of  keeping  the  attend- 
ance of  visitors  down.  Victor  Hugo  once  said  that  there  is  nothing 
so  interesting  as  what  is  going  on  behind  a  high  wall  when  it  cannot 
be  seen,  and  the  attraction  of  the  mysterious  prison  has  always 
been  great  for  many  people.  In  modern  days,  the  imposing  of  an 
admission  fee  has  largely  been  abandoned,  on  the  theory  that 
convicts  should  not  be  exhibited  as  so  and  so  many  animals  or 
curiosities.    Here  and  there,  however,  the  custom  still  exists. 


««Dix.     Remarks,  p.  51. 
•'Dix.     Remarks,  p.  43. 


CHAPTER  XVI 


NEW  JERSEY 

*'A  mere  burlesque  of  a  prison!"  was  the  description  given  in 
1829  by  a  witness  to  a  Legislative  committee,  in  describing  the 
old  State  penitentiary  at  Lamberton,  New  Jersey,  one  and  one-half 
miles  south  of  Trenton.  The  prison  had  been  established  in  1798 
upon  that  site,  for  the  sole  reason  that  'Hhe  land  had  been  given 
by  somebody. ' '  ^  Like  other  American  prisons  of  the  period,  it  was 
greatly  influenced  by  the  Walnut  Street  Prison  of  Philadelphia, 
and  contained  large  cell-rooms. 

In  time,  buildings  for  shops  and  other  purposes  had  been  added, 
scattered  about  the  yard  without  unity  or  design.^  All  the  evils 
of  promiscuous  association,  characteristic  of  other  prisons  of  the 
first  period,  had  become  notorious  at  the  New  Jersey  prison,  accord- 
ing to  the  above  report.  There  was  hardly  a  semblance  of  discipline 
at  Lamberton.  From  the  front  windows  of  the  kitchen,  prisoners 
passed  and  repassed  articles  to  people  in  the  street;  discharged 
prisoners  could  approach  unobserved  the  various  parts  of  the 
prison,  and  throw  articles  over  the  walls.  Released  convicts  had 
even  broken  into  the  prison  at  night,  and  the  authorities  were 
fearful  of  a  jail  delivery  through  an  organized  body  of  men  recently 
released  from  prison.® 

There  was  so  little  discipline  that  convicts  would  leave  their 
work  in  the  shops  and  go  into  the  yard.  The  greatest  familiarity 
prevailed  between  certain  keepers  and  certain  convicts.  There 
was  smuggling  and  trading  between  them.  A  certain  desperate 
group  of  prisoners  was  called  the  *  *  Stanch  Gang.  ^ ' 

''They  will  lie,  and  swear  to  it;  they  will  steal  provision,  and  carry  it  off; 
they  will  lurk  in  the  kitchen  and  steal  other  men's  provision;  they  will 
threaten  each  others'  lives;  they  will  make  dirks;  they  will  make  their  own 
cards.  They  have  rules  by  which  they  are  bound  to  each  other;  one  rule  is 
that  if  a  man  tells  anything,  they  will  fall  afoul  of  him,  and  beat  him. 
Men  who  tell  on  others  are  called  'snitch.'  "  (The  word  "Snitch"  is  a 
term  still  current  as  a  verb  —  to  tell  tales,  to  give  information  about.)  * 

In  the  cells,  under  this  first  system,  there  was  abundant  conversa- 
tion. Supervision  was  lax,  and  the  construction  of  the  prison  made 
the  approach  of  the  keeper  audible  at  a  distance.  One  prisoner 
made  a  complete  ladder  in  his  cell,  with  which  to  scale  the  walls. 
The  news  of  the  outside  world  percolated  quickly  into  the  institu- 
tion. Riots  were  frequent,  and  hard  to  subdue.  Convicts  to  the 
number  of  108  had  escaped  since  the  founding  of  the  prison  in 
1798  —  more  than  one-twelfth  of  all  admissions,  a  number  without 

1  Report  of  Joint  Comm.     Votes  of  Assembly,  1830,  p.  411. 

2B.  P.  D.  S.,  1830.  p.  420. 

'  Report  of  Joint  Comm.,  p.  414. 

*  Report  of  Joint  Comm.     Votes  of  Assembly,  1830,  p.  411. 

[189] 


190  History  op  American  Prisons 

parallel.^  One  keeper  had  been  stabbed,  two  prisoners  shot,  and 
one  killed.    Fifty-five  of  the  runaways  had  never  been  recaptured. 

Punishments  in  the  first  period  were  severe.  Solitary  confine- 
ment with  bread  and  water  was  much  used,  sometimes  for  from  20 
to  30  days  at  a  time.  Sufferings  of  convicts  thus  punished  were 
intense,  and  the  convicts  had  to  spend  almost  an  equal  time  in  the 
hospital,  in  recuperating.  Chains  were  much  used ;  men  sometimes 
were  chained  at  work,  and  sometimes  to  a  **  fifty-six. ' '  One  lad 
of  from  12  to  14  years  was  seen  by  the  committee  in  1829  wearing 
a  neck  yoke ;  his  arms  extended  from  18  to  20  inches  from  his  head, 
to  prevent  his  getting  through  the  gates.  A  convict  had  been  found 
in  one  cell  in  solitary  confinemnet  for  three  days  with  nothing  but 
water.^  The  committee  found  that  ten  prisoners  were  said  to 
have  died  from  severe  punishment  in  their  cells. 

The  prison  had  never,  up  to  the  time  of  the  committee's  report, 
paid  its  own  expenses  from  the  labor  of  convicts.^  From  1800  to 
1829,  the  total  loss  to  the  State  caused  by  the  prison  had  been 
$164,963,  a  sum  equal  to  one-third  of  all  the  taxes  raised  in  the 
State  for  all  purposes  during  that  period  (Votes  of  the  Assembly,  55 
Gen.  Ass.,  1830-31),  an  average  of  $5,304  as  year.  Of  the  total 
number  of  prisoners  committed,  1,206  in  all,  there  had  been,  so  far 
as  known,  90  recommitments  and  a  few  reformations. 

An  interesting  "budget"  of  daily  expenses  of  the  prison,  per 
capita,  showed  the  following: 

Cents.  Mills. 

Clothing    4  8 

Incidental  2  9 

Total    excl.   salaries 9  3 

Officers    9  4 

Total      per      capita      per 

diem    18  7 

The  balance  sheet  of  the  prison,  compared  with  that  of  Wethers- 
field,  for  the  year  1829,  was  cited  to  show  the  loss  sustained  by  the 
State  of  New  Jersey  from  its  prison  in  one  year : 
New  Jersey. 
Average,   90   Prisoners.  Connecticut. 

Expenses  $6,199  00      Expenses  $5,876  1.3 

Earnings  3,427  98      Earnings  9,105  54 

Deficit  $2,771  02      Surplus   $3,229  41 


In  the  "twenties"  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  penitentiary 
had  undertaken  to  confine  a  certain  number  of  convicts  in  solitary 
confinement,  without  labor,  during  their  entire  sentence  of  18 
months  or  two  years.  The  test  was  not  a  rigid  one,  as  that  of 
Auburn  Prison  in  1822  and  1823.  At  Lamberton,  the  prisoners  in 
solitary    confinement    were    largely    unsupervised    and   conversed 

6  Reports  of  Joint  Comm.     Votes  of  Assembly,  1830,  p.  415. 
«  Votes  of  Assembly,  1830-31,  p.  94. 
'  Report  of  Joint  Comm.,  p.  422. 


History  of  American  Prisons  191 

freely.^  Although  their  diet  was  restricted  to  half  that  allowed  to 
men  in  the  shops,  this  simply  reduced  the  passions.^  This  pro- 
cedure, which  began  in  1825,  had  no  value  as  a  test  of  solitary 
confinement,  although  it  was  cited  later  as  such  by  opponents  of 
the  so-called  ** separate  system." 

The  convicts  were  engaged  in  thirteen  different  industries,  of 
which  the  chief  were  shoemaking,  weaving,  and  sawing  stone.^* 
The  administrative  methods,  the  experiences  with  the  several  indus- 
tries, and  the  various  methods  employed  in  dealing  with  the 
inmates,  resembled  very  markedly  the  experiences  of  the  Walnut 
Street  Prison,  even  to  the  almost  literal  copying  of  the  rules  and 
regulations,  and  of  the  laws  founding  the  earlier  institution. 

Members  of  an  auxiliary  of  the  Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society, 
located  at  Princeton,  a  few  miles  distant,  visited  the  prison  every 
Sunday,  according  to  a  report  of  the  year  1828,  and  conducted 
religious  services.  One  or  more  of  the  members  visited  the  prisoners 
in  solitary  confinement.  By  the  Legislature  of  1829  a  permanent 
chaplain  was  authorized,  and  an  appropriation  of  $150  granted  —  a 
sum  that  the  Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society  had  for  two  years 
allotted  for  this  purpose. 

The  joint  committee  of  the  Legislature,  stating  that  the  only 
solution  was  a  new  prison,  recommended  the  establishment  of  a 
modern  penitentiary  on  the  type  of  Auburn  or  Wethersfield.  Obvi- 
ously, the  conditions  at  the  old  prison  were  scandalous.  In  1831, 
there  was  a  striking  increase  in  the  number  of  admissions.  The 
severities  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  on  the  south,  and  of  Auburn, 
Sing  Sing  and  Wethersfield  on  the  north,  were  believed  to  be 
driving  convicts  into  New  Jersey  as  the  safest  place  in  which  to 
ply  their  trades.  One-third  of  the  commitments  in  1832  were  of 
convicts  from  other  States  than  New  Jersey.  The  Lamberton  prison 
had  no  terrors  for   such  persons." 

In  1833,  a  joint  Legislative  committee,  declaring  that  the  prison 
was  an  incongruous  pile,  without  order  or  arrangement,  and  heaped 
together  from  time  to  time,  recommended  the  immediate  building 
of  a  new  prison,  not  however  on  the  Auburn  plan,  but  modeled  on 
the  new  Eastern  Penitentiary  of  Pennsylvania,  less  than  30  miles 
away.  For  the  first  time,  a  State  other  than  Pennsylvania  was 
thereby  adhering  to  the  principle  of  the  constant  separation  of 
prisoners.  The  committee  based  its  decision  on  its  belief  that 
solitude  was  the  most  powerful  agent  in  working  out  individual 
reformation.  Collective  labor  and  instruction,  as  practiced  at 
Auburn,  interrupted  and  to  some  extent  paralyzed  individual 
efforts  at  reformation.  The  association  of  convicts  was  fraught 
with  evil  consequences.  New  Jersey  should  adopt  a  system  that 
would  ensure  that  no  convict  should  be  seen  by  another.  The 
Pennsylvania  discipline  was  understood  to  be  mild,  the  severest 

8  B.  p.  D.  S.,  1827,  p.  59. 

»B.  p.  D.  S..  1826,  p.  14. 

10  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1827,  p.  120. 

"  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1831,  p.  493  ;  1832,  p.  572. 


192  History  of  American  Prisons 

punishment  inflicted  being  the  deprivation  of  labor  in  the  cell.  Soli- 
tary labor  and  confinement  were  salutary,  and  deterred  from  crime ; 
the  terror  caused  in  the  community  by  the  prison  would  materially 
reduce  crime  within  the  State.^^ 

As  to  the  argument  that  the  prison  would  be  very  expensive  to 
construct  and  maintain  on  the  Pennsylvania  plan,  the  committee 
stated  that  labor  and  profit  were,  anyway,  simply  a  means,  dic- 
tated by  the  wisest  benevolence,  for  the  health  of  the  convict 's  moral 
and  physical  powers.  The  best  good  of  the  convict  and  that  of  the 
society  he  had  offended  were  the  high  purposes  aimed  at  in  prison 
discipline;  and  should  the  labor  and  profit  be  even  lost,  it  would 
bear  no  comparison  to  the  good  to  be  obtained.  However,  a  convict 
should  in  six  months  earn  his  maintenance,  as  had  been  shown  in 
Philadelphia.  The  Governor  of  New  Jersey  assured  the  Legislature 
that  as  soon  as  the  prison  was  fully  organized,  the  entire  expenses 
would  be  paid  from  the  proceeds  of  the  prison.^^ 

Therefore,  in  February,  1833,  the  Legislature  authorized  the 
erection  of  a  new  penitentiary,  to  hold  150  prisoners,  in  separate 
confinement  at  hard  labor,  and  appropriated  $130,000  toward  the 
building  of  the  same.^^  John  Haviland,  who  had  designed  the 
Eastern  Penitentiary,  was  appointed  architect.  Ground  was 
selected  contiguous  to  the  then  existing  prison,  in  the  form  of  a 
parallelogram,  500  feet  by  300  feet.  Haviland 's  design  included 
a  central  administration  building  for  the  dwelling  houses  and 
offices  of  the  warden.  In  the  rear  of  this  building  there  was  toi 
be  a  semi-circular  observatory,  55  feet  in  diameter,  from  which  five 
wings  should  radiate,  like  the  fingers  of  an  outspread  hand.  The 
wings  would  contain  solitary  cells,  and  were  to  be  two  stories  high. 
The  cells,  on  each  side  of  a  central  corridor  14  feet  wide,  were  12 
feet  long  by  8  feet  wide,  equipped  as  in  the  Eastern  Penitentiary, 
each  cell  having  its  own  running  water  and  its  water  closet.  The 
cells  were  closed  from  the  corridor  by  double  doors,  the  interior 
door  being  of  wood  sheathed  with  iron.  In  the  door  there  was  a 
small  hole  for  observation  from  the  corridor.^^ 

There  were,  however,  to  be  no  exercising  yards  connecting  with 
the  cells.  Herein  lay  a  vital  and  surprising  defect,  one  that 
ultimately  led  to  the  breakdown  of  the  system.  The  prisoners  never, 
while  the  system  was  operating,  according  to  the  letter  of  the  law 
were  brought  out  into  the  sunlight  —  and  serious  mental  and 
physical  results  arose  therefrom.  No  explanation  was  given  at  the 
time  of  planning  the  prison  as  to  the  reason  for  the  omission  of 
the  exercising  yards,  but  it  was  probably  due  to  economy." 

Haviland 's  estimate  of  the  cost  of  the  prison  was  as  follows: 

External  wall  $14,000 

Front   building,   including   laundry,    culinary,    bathing,    storeroom, 

keeper's  chambers,  observatory,  reservoir,  belfry 15,000 

Culverts,  sinks,  pipes,  covered  ways,   cooking  apparatus,  warming 

and  raising  water  into  reservoir 13,000 

12  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1833,  p.  698. 

"  Same,  p.  699. 

"  Crawford,  App.  50. 

i^De  Metz  and  Blouet.  p.   66. 

"  Crawford,  App.,  p.  49. 


History  of  American  Prisons  193 

A  Block,  50  cells $18,000 

B  Block,  75  cells  27,000 

C  Block,  50  cells  18,000 

D  Block,  75  cells  27,000 

E  Block,  50  cells  18,000 


$150,000 


The  estimated  per  capita  cost  was  but  $500  a  cell,  a  noteworthy 
reduction  as  compared  with  that  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary. 
Governor  Peter  D.  Vroom,  Jr.,  in  1834,  doubted  not  that  when  the 
prison  was  completed,  it  would  be  the  most  perfect  in  design  and 
execution  in  the  United  States.  He  held  that  it  was  not  even  desir- 
able that  the  new  prison  should  be  a  source  of  profit  to  the  State. 
If  it  paid  expenses  the  State  would  be  satisfied.^^ 

In  the  report  of  the  Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society  for  1833 
is  the  record  of  an  annual  meeting  of  the  Prison  Instruction  Society 
in  New  Jersey,  held  at  the  State  House  in  Trenton  in  January, 
1833.  Most  of  the  Legislature  attended  the  meeting.  The  chief 
objects  of  the  society  were: 

**To  extend  to  the  convicts  in  the  prisons  of  this  State  the  benefits  of  the 
Sabbath  school  system  of  instruction,  and  also  to  furnish  them  with  preach- 
ing. In  connection  with  the  foregoing  objects,  provision  shall  also  be  made 
for  inquiring  into  the  relative  efficiency  of  different  modes  of  prison  dis- 
cipline, and  of  different  modes  of  instruction.'' 

The  New  Jersey  Howard  Society  was  also  established  in  1833, 
''to  attack  the  barbarous  practice  of  imprisoning  debtors,  and  to 
urge  better  provision  for  the  care  of  the  insane  and  the  reforma- 
tion of  delinquent  minors.  ^ '  ^* 

By  1837,  the  new  prison  had  been  made  ready  for  occupancy,  at  a 
cost,  of  $193,012.^*  Haviland's  estimate  was  thus  overreached 
by  far,  because  only  two  of  the  five  wings  had  been  built.  Blouet 
reported  that  there  were,  when  he  visited  in  1835  the  prison,  192 
cells,  and  that  the  total  costs  of  construction  had  been  approxi- 
mately $200,000  or  over  $1,000  a  cell.^^  Of  course,  with  the 
addition  of  the  unbuilt  wings,  the  per  capita  cost  would  be  lowered. 

The  old  State  prison  was  converted  into  a  State  arsenal.  For 
the  first  time  in  this  year  the  prison  supported  itself,  except  in  the 
payment  of  salaries  to  the  officers,  a  regular  burden  upon  the  State 
treasury.  There  was  very  uncommonly  good  health  in  the  new 
penitentiary,  one  death  only  being  recorded  in  14  months,  ending 
September  30th,  1837.^2 

In  the  new  prison  there  was  no  chapel  and  no  chaplain.  Volun- 
teers from  the  clergy  of  Trenton  and  vicinity  held  occasional 
services.  Members  of  the  Society  of  Friends  occasionally  visited  the 
prisoners  in  their  cells.  Not  until  approximately  1845  were 
arrangements  made  for  providing  a  teacher,  uniting  the  offices  of 

"  Votes  of  Ass.,  1834,  p.  15. 

18  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1834,  p.  85. 

"  Governor's  Message,  January,  1837. 

20  De  Metz  et  Blouet,  p.  66. 

^  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1837. 


194  History  of  American  Prisons 

moral  instructor  and  school  master.  At  this  time,  also,  a  suitable 
and  fairly  large  library  was  given  by  several  interested  citizens 
of  Jersey  City  and  Newark.^^ 

The  cells  were  very  comfortable,  according  to  one  of  the  visitors 
in  1838,  well  ventilated  and  free  from  odor.  Joseph  A.  Yard,  a 
pious  Methodist,  was  appointed  warden.^*  The  prisoners  testified 
to  the  humanity  of  their  treatment,  but  a  visitor,  reporting  to  the 
Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society,  stated  that  he  believed  that  the 
health  of  the  prisoners  and  in  some  instances  their  minds  was  being 
injuriously  affected,  because  of  the  confinement  in  a  small  room. 

The  character  of  the  population  of  the  prison  at  this  time  appears 
from  the  Keeper  Yard's  statement  of  1837,^*  which  shows  that  of 
135  prisoners  in  confinement: 

12  could  read,  write  and  cipher,  and  had  studied  geography  and  grammar, 

25  could  read,  write  and  cipher. 
24  could  read  and  write. 

30  could  read  only. 

13  could  spell. 

18  knew  the  alphabet. 

13  did  not  know  the  alphabet. 

Of  the  prison  population,  51,  or  between  one-third  and  one-half» 
were  colored.  The  chief  causes  of  conviction  were  burglary,  grand 
larceny,  and  assault  and  battery.  Of  the  types  of  criminals  in 
prison,  Dorothea  Dix  wrote: 

'^Enlightened  transgressors,  and  men  of  considerable  intellectual  capacity, 
rarely  are  found  in  prison.  They  are  too  adroit,  too  cunning,  to  permit  them- 
selves to  be  ensnared  by  the  emissaries  of  the  law.  Feeble  minds,  too  infirm 
of  purpose  to  keep  in  the  straight  path,  too  incapable  of  reasoning  out  their 
truest  good  and  best  interest,  and  many  of  constitutionally  depraved  pro- 
pensities, chiefly  fill      .      .      .     our  penitentiaries. ' '  ^ 

The  experiences  of  the  prison  were  closely  watched,  to  discover 
the  effects  of  constant  solitary  confinement  without  open-air  exer- 
cise upon  the  prisoners.  For  the  year  1838,  the  prison  physician, 
Dr.  James  B.  Coleman,  stated  that  there  had  not  been  as  much 
disease  as  might  have  been  anticipated.  There  was  a  peculiar 
tendency  of  the  prisoners  to  scrofula.  There  had  been  five  deaths 
from  diseases  brought  into  the  prison  by  the  inmates,  but  aggra- 
vated perhaps  by  confinement.  The  deaths  of  four  were  caused  by 
abscesses  in  the  lungs.  In  all  cases,  reported  the  physician,  the 
lymphatic  glands  were  obstructed  to  a  degree  seldom  seen  in 
outside  practice.^® 

The  board  of  directors  had  failed,  according  to  their  report,  to 
discover  the  injurious  effects  upon  prisoners  that  the  physician 
had  mentioned.  The  prisoners  presented  a  pale  and  rather  un- 
healthy appearance  which  the  board  believed  was  a  consequence 
of  living  entirely  in  the  shade,  and  not  an  effect  of  disease.  The 
inspectors  also  asked  if  the  terms  of  imprisonment  might  not  be 
abridged  because  of  the  severity  of  punishment.^^ 

21  Dix.     Remarks,  p.  58. 

23  Same,  p.  233. 

2*  Votes  of  Assembly,  1837-38,  p.  442. 

26  Dix.     Remarks,  p.  64. 

26  Votes  of  Ass.,  1838-39,  p.  43. 

^  Votes  of  Ass.,  1838-39,  pp.  71-73. 


History  of  American  Prisons  195 

In  another  year,  the  physician  was  more  definite.  Sunlight  and 
air  were  essential  to  health.  Post-mortem  examinations  had  proved 
the  effects  that  might  have  been  anticipated.  Every  year  of  a 
prisoner's  confinement  in  the  cells  would  show  a  decline  of  the 
physical  powers.  The  enervating  influences  of  cellular  confinement 
had  been  felt,  although  the  general  health  was  good.  It  is  note- 
worthy, however,  that  in  this  year  37  persons  were  pardoned. 

The  convicts  who  had  been  transferred  from  the  old  prison,  where 
-&  large  part  of  their  day  had  been  spent  outside  of  their  cells,  had 
not  shown  the  effects  of  constant  cellular  confinement  for  the  first 
two  years,  but  had  now  become  debilitated,  and  languid.  Said  the 
physician : 

**In  the  prison  the  physician  will  see  minds  that,  subject  to  the  common 
perceptions  of  out-of-door  life,  would  be  as  astute  as  others,  indulge  in  the 
amusements  of  the  child,  wasting  their  time,  after  the  daily  task  is  over, 
upon  toys;  engaged  in  no  thought  that  is  not  immediately  associated  with  the 
things  about  them;  incapable  of  abstract  reflection,  or,  if  showing  any  evi- 
dence of  the  higher  operations  of  the  faculties,  it  is  more  the  wandering  of 
a  visionary,  than  the  operation  of  a  well-balanced  mind. 

"Among  the  prisoners  there  are  many  cases  of  insanity.  Almost  all  the 
cases  that  have  occurred  in  prison  can  be  traced  to  onanism.  Among  the 
prisoners  there  are  many  who  exhibit  a  child-like  simplicity,  which  shows 
them  to  be  less  acute  than  when  they  entered.  In  all  who  have  been  more 
than  a  year  in  the  prison,  some  of  these  effects  have  been  observed.  Now 
they  are  managed  under  the  most  favorable  circumstances  the  nature  of  their 
confinement  permits.  .  .  .  Were  another  course  pursued,  and  the  super- 
intendent (warden)  possessed  of  no  sympathy  for  the  convict,  in  less  than  a 
year  the  New  Jersey  prison  would  be  a  bedlam. 

"If  there  be  more  disease  in  solitary  confinement,  it  is  of  a  peculiar  char- 
acter, slow  in  its  work  and  important  in  its  effects  upon  the  mind.  It  is  for 
others  to  determine  whether  the  old  discipline,  hardening  the  vicious  in  the 
crimes,  while  it  preserves  the  body  in  its  full  vigor,  so  that  at  the  expiration 
of  the  sentence  the  convict  may  go  forth  a  more  accomplished  rogue  than 
when  he  entered  the  penitentiary,  is  to  be  preferred  to  another  which,  while 
it  subdues  the  evil  passions,  almost  paralyzes  them  for  want  of  exercise, 
leaves  the  individual,  if  still  a  rogue,  one  that  may  be  easily  detected. ' '  -'* 

Despite  the  findings  of  the  physician,  the  board  of  inspectors 
maintained  that  under  any  circumstances  the  system  was  far 
superior  to  the  former  conditions  at  the  prison.  The  inspectors 
doubted,  however,  whether  many  went  out  of  the  prison  with  good 
moral  stamina,  it  was  so  easy  under  this  system  to  be  good  in  the 
prison. 

In  1840  there  were  reported  few  known  changes  for  the  better 
among  the  convicts.  No  prison,  the  inspectors  concluded,  was  a 
school  for  perfect  reformation.  The  board  upheld  the  system  of 
separate  confinement,  but  maintained  that  under  any  management, 
the  prison  could  not  produce  the  unnatural  results,  in  the  way  of 
reformations,  that  had  frequently  been  claimed  by  the  system's 
advocates.^*  Many  of  the  sentences  were  far  too  long,  in  view 
of  the  severity  of  constant  separate  confinement;  ten  years  would 
be  a  terrible  punishment,  hardly  to  be  endured.  There  were  twelve 
deranged  prisoners  in  the  institution,  who  should  have  been  sent  to 
a  lunatic  asylum. 


28  Votes   of  Assembly,    1839-40. 

2»  Votes  of  Assembly,  1840-41,  p.  215. 


196  History  of  American  Prisons 

The  physician  reported  only  two  deaths  during  the  year,  both 
however  from  the  effects  of  solitary  confinement.  The  effects  of 
such  confinement  were  now  well  determined : 

Diminished  force  of  the  organs  generally. 
Particularly  a  weakening  of  the  muscular  fibre. 
Obstruction  of  the  lymphatic  glands. 
Vitiated  nervous  action. 
The  mind  suffers  and  the  power  is  weakened. 

In  1840  the  system  of  separate  confinement  broke  down  at  the 
New  Jersey  Prison.  The  physcian  was  clearly  a  disbeliever  in  its 
beneficent  results ;  the  board  of  inspectors  was  not  convinced  of  its 
potency.  Therefore,  the  principle  of  constant  solitary  confinement 
was  abandoned  when  sickness  required.  A  convict  was  placed  in 
the  cell  of  the  sufferer.  Inroads  on  health  were  causing  constant 
complaints  among  the  prisoners.  Applications  for  pardon  were 
made  with  frequency  on  that  ground.  Some  prisoners  were  indeed 
pardoned  who  died  shortly  after  leaving  prison.®^ 

The  cells  were  often  conductive  to  sickness;  there  was  much 
trouble  with  the  heating  and  ventilating  system,  and  this  was 
rectified  only  after  experiments  conducted  during  several  years. 
In  winter,  many  of  the  cells  were  so  cold  as  to  interfere  materially 
with  the  prisoner's  labor. 

We  would  pause  here,  for  a  moment,  to  emphasize  the  serious 
inadequacy  of  proper  ventilation  in  the  early  American  prisons, 
particularly  in  those  on  the  Auburn  plan  of  construction.  After 
the  convicts  had  been  for  several  hours  in  their  cells  at  night,  the 
air  became  insufferably  impure.  The  absence  of  any  forced  ventila- 
tion from  the  individual  cells,  the  excessive  smallness  of  the  cells, 
the  closed  windows  of  the  cellhouses  in  winter,  the  coal  stoves  in  the 
corridors,  and  the  emanations  from  the  inadequately  bathed  prison- 
ers made  a  condition  that  often  must  have  been  almost  intolerable. 
The  Eastern  Penitentiary  was  better  equipped,  in  so  far  as  the 
cell  windows  or  cell  doors  were  concerned,  for  pure  air  could  be 
admitted  from  the  exercise  yards  to  the  individual  cells.  The 
Trenton  prison,  being  without  exercise  yards,  must  have  experi- 
enced troublesome  ventilation  problems.^^ 

In  1843,  the  introduction  of  convicts  into  the  cells  of  other 
inmates  was  extended. 

*'To  prevent  the  evils  of  solitary  confinement,  and  especially  an  abuse 
common  to  this  system  of  punishment,  other  convicts  have  been  put  in  the 
cells,  and  the  evils  in  many  cases  remedied.  Cases  of  derangement  have  been 
prevented  by  this  course.  Those  suffering  from  want  of  air  have  been  turned 
into  the  yard  for  a  few  hours  a  day.  More  pains  have  been  taken  to  ven- 
tilate the  cells." 

The  physician  reported  that  another  cause  of  better  health  was 
the  rigid  exaction  of  labor  from  each  prisoner  able  to  work.  For 
* '  despondency, ' '  he  was  liberal  in  prescribing  tobacco.    The  number 

a>  Votes  of  Ass.   1840-41,  p.  219. 
s^Dix.     Remarks,  p.  37. 


History  of  American  Prisons  197 

of  insane  became  less.    Expiration  of  terms,  and  the  use  of  pardons, 
had  relieved  the  institution  of  some  of  its  problems: 

"The  more  rigidly  the  plan  of  solitary  confinement  is  carried  out,  the  more 
the  spirit  of  the  law  is  observed,  the  more  the  effects  are  visible  in  the  health 
of  the  convicts.  A  little  more  intercourse  with  each  other,  and  a  little  more 
air  in  the  yard,  has  in  almost  every  case  shown  a  corresponding  rise  in  the 
health  of  the  individual.  That  an  opinion  to  the  contrary  should  hav^e  been 
advocated  at  this  time,  when  the  animal  functions  are  so  well  understood, 
seems  like  a  determination  to  disregard  science  in  the  support  of  a  mistaken 
but  favored  policy. ' '  ^ 

The  reference  to  the  '  *  animal  functions ' '  by  the  physician  of  the 
Trenton  prison  is  a  quotation  from  a  noted  phrenologist  of  this 
period,  George  Combe,  who,  born  in  1788  in  Edinburgh,  was  one 
of  the  forerunners  of  the  anthropological  school  of  the  Italians,  in 
so  far  as  he  attempted  to  determine  traits  and  tendencies  through 
the  contemplation  and  analysis  of  physical  stigmata,  especially  of 
the  face  and  head.  Doctor  Combe  delivered  in  Edinburgh  a  course 
of  lectures  on  *' Moral  Philosophy,"  which,  collected  in  book  form, 
presented  a  discussion  of  the  proper  treatment  of  criminals  that 
was  most  remarkable  for  constructive  thinking  and  lucidity,  ante- 
dating in  some  of  its  propositions  any  American  published  program 
of  suggestions  that  we  have  found. 

Combe  traveled  extensively  through  the  Eastern  and  Central 
portion  of  the  United  States  in  1838.  Of  the  solitary  system  of  the 
Eastern  Penitentiary  he  said: 

**The  system  of  entire  solitude  weakens  the  whole  nervous  system.  It 
withdraws  external  excitement  from  the  animal  propensities,  but  operates  in 
the  same  manner  on  the  organs  of  the  moral  and  intellectual  faculties.  Social 
life  is  to  these  powers  what  an  organ  field  is  to  the  muscles ;  it  is  their 
theatre  of  action,  and  without  action  there  can  be  no  vigor.  Solitude,  even 
when  combined  with  labor  and  the  use  of  books,  and  an  occasional  visit  from  a 
religious  instructor,  leaves  the  moral  faculties  still  in  a  passive  state,  and 
without  the  means  of  rigorous  and  active  exercise. 

''The  discipline  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  reduces  the  tone  of  the  whole 
nervous  system  to  the  level  which  is  in  harmony  with  solitude.  The  passions 
are  weakened  and  subdued,  but  so  are  all  the  moral  and  intellectual  powers. 
The  susceptibility  of  the  nervous  system  is  increased,  because  all  organs  be- 
come susceptible  in  proportion  to  their  feebleness.  A  weak  eye  is  pained  by 
light  which  is  agreeable  to  a  sound  one. 

"Hence  it  may  be  quite  true  that  religious  admonitions  will  be  deeply 
felt  by  prisoners  living  in  solitude  more  than  by  those  enjoying  society;  just 
as  such  instruction,  when  addressed  to  a  patient  recovering  from  a  severe 
and  debilitating  illness,  makes  a  more  vivid  impression  than  when  delivered 
to  the  same  individual  in  health.  But  the  appearance  of  reformation  founded 
on  such  impressions  is  deceitful.  When  the  sentence  has  expired,  the  convict 
will  return  to  society  with  all  his  mental  powers,  animal,  moral  and  intel- 
lectual, increased  in  susceptibility  but  lowered  in  strength.  The  excitements 
that  will  then  assail  him  will  have  their  influence  doubled  by  operating  on  an 
enfeebled  system. 

"Convicts,  after  long  confinement  in  solitude,  shudder  to  encounter  the 
turmoil  of  the  world;  they  become  excited  as  the  day  of  liberation  approaches, 
and  feel  bewildered  when  set  at  liberty.  In  short,  this  system  is  not  founded 
on,  or  in  harmony  with,  a  sound  knowledge  of  the  physiology  of  the  brain, 
although  it  appeared  to  me  to  be  well  administered.  .  .  .  There  are 
advantages  that  go  far  to  compensate  the  evils  of  solitude,  but  none  to  remove 
them."«8 

82  Votes  of  Assembly,   1841-42,  p.   191. 
«« Votes  of  Assembly,  1841-42,  p.  191. 


198  History  of  American  Prisons 

We  find  in  George  Combe  an  astute  student  of  humanity,  in  an 
age  when  phrenology  occupied  a  respectable  position  among  the 
*' sciences,"  a  precursor  of  the  psychologists  and  the  psychiatrist 
of  to-day,  evolving  some  theories  of  prison  discipline  far  in  advance 
of  the  practice  of  the  time.  Combe  certainly  should  not  be  over- 
looked, in  our  tracing  backward  to  discover  the  birth  and  develop- 
ment of  the  theory  of  the  indeterminate  sentence,  and  of  the  theory 
that  incorrigible  criminals  should  be  permanently  detained  in 
custody.  For,  as  early  as  1839,  Combe  had  arrived  at  the  belief 
that 

**the  necessity  for  an  asylum  for  convicts,  intermediate  between  the  prison 
and  society,  while  the  present  system  of  treatment  is  pursued,  is  obvious. 
.  .  .  All  American  prisons  that  I  have  seen  are  lamentably  deficient  in 
arrangements  for  exercising  the  moral  and  intellectual  faculties  of  their  in- 
mates. During  the  hours  of  labor,  no  advance  can  be  made.  After  the  hours 
of  labor,  he  is  locked  in  his  cell  in  solitude,  and  I  doubt  much  if  he  can 
read,  for  want  of  light;  but  assuming  that  he  can,  reading  is  a  very  imperfect 
means  of  strengthening  the  moral  powers.  They  must  be  exercised,  trained 
and  habituated  to  action. 

**  There  should  be  a  teacher  of  high  moral  and  intellectual  power  for  every 
eight  to  ten  convicts.  These  teachers  should  go  to  work  on  the  convicts  after 
the  close  of  labor.  In  proportion  as  the  prisoners  give  proof  of  moral  and 
intellectual  advancement,  they  should  be  indulged  with  the  liberty  of  social 
converse  and  action  for  a  certain  time  each  week-day,  and  on  Sunday,  in  the 
presence  of  the  teacher;  and  in  these  conversations  or  evening  parties,  they 
should  be  trained  to  the  use  of  their  highest  powers  and  trained  to  restrain 
their  propensities.  Every  indication  of  over-active  propensity  should  be 
visited  by  a  restriction  of  liberty  and  enjoyment.  .  .  .  These  advan- 
tages should  be  increased  in  exact  proportion  to  the  advancement  of  the 
convicts  in  morality  and  understanding. 

"By  such  means,  if  any,  would  the  convicts  be  prepared  to  enter  society 
.  .  .  so  trained  as  to  give  them  a  chance  of  resisting  temptation,  and 
continuing  in  the  paths  of  virtue.  .  .  .  In  no  country  has  the  idea  yet 
been  carried  into  effect,  that  in  order  to  produce  moral  fruits,  it  is  necessary 
to  put  into  action  moral  influences,  great  and  powerful  in  proportion  to  the 
barrenness  of  the  soil  from  which  they  are  expected  to  spring ' '  ^ 

The  deep  significance  of  the  above  passage  is,  that  there  is 
therein  clearly  recommended  a  most  modern  principle  in  the  treat- 
ment of  the  prisoner,  namely,  the  growth  toward  reformation  and 
reclamation  through  the  opportunity  for  self-expression  within 
prison  walls.  It  was  Mr.  Osborne  who  made  current  the  expression : 
*  *  Only  through  freedom  can  the  prisoner  become  fit  for  freedom, ' ' 
and  the  Mutual  Welfare  League,  despite  its  failures,  did  at  Auburn 
and  Sing  Sing  prisons  manifest  the  truth  of  the  theory  that  not 
only  the  individual  treatment  of  the  prisoner  by  the  prison  authori- 
ties, but  the  self-expression  of  the  individual  prisoner,  are  essential 
parts  of  a  modern  prison  program.  And  here  was  Combe,  in  an 
age  that  extolled  a  Lynds,  and  a  Pilsbury,  who  were  mainly  repres- 
sionists,  proclaiming  that  such  a  system  was  fundamentally 
unsound.  Surely,  an  interesting  phenomenon  —  one  rising  before 
its  time,  and  failing  to  prevail,  because  the  world  had  not  caught 
up  to  it. 

3*  Combe.     Notes  on  United  States,  Vol.  II,  p.  18. 


/ 


History  of  American  Prisons  199 

Other  passages  from  Combe's  works  are  equally  prophetic,  as  in 
the  following  foreshadowing  of  a  system  of  indeterminate  sentence 
and  parole : 

*'How  should  we  treat  criminals?  (He  is  here  speaking  of  a  class  that  to- 
day we  should  call  perhaps  moral  imbeciles.)  They  should  be  placed  in 
penitentiaries,  and  be  prevented  from  abusing  their  faculties,  yet  be  hu- 
manely treated,  and  permitted  to  enjoy  comfort  and  as  much  liberty  as 
they  could  sustain,  without  injuring  themselves  or  their  fellowmen.  .  .  . 
If  by  long  restraint  and  moral  training  and  instruction  they  should  ever  be- 
come capable  of  self-guidance,  they  should  be  viewed  as  patients  who  have 
recovered,  and  be  liberated,  on  the  understanding  that  if  they  should  relapse 
into  immoral  habits  they  should  be  restored  to  their  places  in  the  asylum. ' ' " 

Phrenologists  have  long  proclaimed  that  the  great  cause  of  the  incor- 
rigibility of  criminals  is  the  active  predominance  of  the  organ  of  the  animal 
propensities  over  those  of  the  moral  and  intellectual  faculties,  and  that  this 
.class  of  persons  is  really  composed  of  moral  patients,  who  should  be  re- 
strained but  not  otherwise  punished,  during  life.  ^* 

In  view  of  social  protection,  any  individual  who  has  been  convicted  of 
infringing  the  criminal  law.  should  be  handed  over,  as  a  moral  patient,  to 
the  managers  of  a  well-regulated  penitentiary,  to  be  confined  in  it,  not  until 
he  shall  have  endured  a  certain  amount  of  suffering,  equal  in  magnitude  to 
what  is  supposed  to  be  a  fair  revenge  for  his  offense,  but  until  such  change 
shall  have  been  effected  in  his  mental  condition  as  may  afford  society  a  rea- 
sonable guarantee  that  he  will  not  commit  fresh  crimes  when  he  is  set  at 
liberty.  This  course  of  treatment  would  be  humanity  itself  to  the  offender, 
compared  with  the  present  system,  while  it  would  unspeakably  benefit  society. 
It  would  convert  our  prisons  from  houses  of  retribution  and  corruption  into 
schools  of  reform.  It  would  require,  however,  an  entire  change  in  the  prin- 
ciples in  which  they  are  conducted. " 

There  is  far  greater  humanity  in  a  sentence  for  a  first  offense  that  shall 
reform  the  culprit,  although  the  offense  itself  may  be  small,  and  the  con- 
finement long,  than  in  one  decreeing  punishment  for  a  few  days  only,  pro- 
portional solely  to  the  amount  of  the  crime.  ^ 

There  is  something  almost  uncanny  in  finding  the  above  sporadic 
utterances  of  Combe  appearing  suddenly  in  a  period  far  removed 
still  from  the  development  in  this  country  of  the  indeterminate 
sentence  for  adults.  Such  propositions  as  above  quoted,  if  pre- 
sented to-day  with  emphasis  before  many  a  convention  of  women's 
clubs  or  even  before  specialized  workers  in  delinquency,  would  be 
heartily  applauded,  and  regarded  as  timely  and  progressive.  Yet 
Combe  affected  apparently  not  at  all  the  general  course  of  prison 
treatment  in  our  country.  He  was  undoubtedly  regarded  as  an 
example,  in  that  day,  of  the  ''high-brow''  of  today,  who  often 
enunciates  a  perfectly  sound  theory,  one  ultimately  to  be  proved 
by  usage,  only  to  be  ignored  in  his  time  because  practical  men  say 
that  it  ''simply  can't  be  done."  When  what  is  often  meant  is, 
that  the  "high-brow"  couldn't  do  it,  and  they  won't  try. 

Here  and  there  in  this  country,  sporadic  statements  were  being 
made,  indicating  an  advanced  conception  of  the  social  possibilities 

»«  Combe.     Moral  Philosophy.     Ed.  1863,  p.  202. 
^Notes  on  United  States,  p.  9. 

87  Moral  Philosophy,  p.  222. 

88  Same,  p.  224. 


\ 

200  History  of  American  Prisons 

of  a  prison.    Doctor  Charles  Caldwell  stated  in  a  course  of  lectures 
on  "Physical  Education"  in  Lexington,  Kentucky  in  1833,  that 

"When  established  on  correct  principles,  and  skillfully  administered, 
penitentiaries  and  houses  of  correction  are  moral  hospitals,  where  criminal 
propensities  are  treated  as  diseases,  consisting  in  unsound  conditions  of  the 
brain. ' ' 

But  Combe  went  even  farther  than  has  been  quoted  by  us 
hitherto.  He  advocated  practically  a  straight-out  treatment  of  the 
criminal  by  a  kind  of  indeterminate  sentence,  administered  by  a 
form  of  court.  In  a  chapter  of  his  ''Moral  Philosophy,"  entitled 
' '  On  the  Treatment  of  Crime, ' '  he  wrote : 

"If  the  principle  which  I  advocate  shall  ever  be  adopted,  the  sentence  of 
the  criminal  judge,  on  conviction  of  a  crime,  would  simply  be  one  finding 
that  the  individual  had  committed  a  certain  offense,  and  was  not  fit  to  live 
in  society;  and,  therefore,  granting  warrant  for  his  transmission  to  a  peni- 
tentiary, to  be  there  confined,  instructed  and  employed,  until  liberated  in 
due  course  of  law. 

"The  process  of  liberation  would  then  become  one  of  the  greatest  im- 
portance. There  should  be  official  inspectors  of  penitentiaries,  invested  with 
some  of  the  powers  of  a  court,  sitting  at  regular  intervals,  and  proceeding 
according  to  fixed  rules.  They  should  be  authorized  to  receive  applications 
for  liberation  at  all  their  sessions,  and  to  grant  the  prayer  of  them  on  being 
satisfied  that  such  a  thorough  change  had  been  effected  in  the  mental  con- 
dition of  the  prisoner,  that  he  might  safely  be  permitted  to  resume  his  place 
in  society. 

"Until  this  conviction  was  produced  upon  examination  of  his  disposition, 
of  his  attainments  in  knowledge,  of  his  acquired  skill  in  some  useful  em- 
ployment, of  his  habits  of  industry,  and,  in  short,  of  his  general  qualifications 
to  provide  for  his  own  support,  to  restrain  his  animal  propensities  from  com- 
mitting abuses,  and  to  act  the  part  of  a  useful  citizen,  he  should  be  retained 
as  an  inmate  of  a  penitentiary. 

"Perhaps  some  individuals,  whose  dispositions  appeared  favorable  to 
reformation,  might  be  liberated  at  an  earlier  period  on  sufficient  security, 
under  bond,  given  by  responsible  relatives  or  friends,  for  the  discharge  of 
the  same  duties  toward  them  in  private  which  the  officers  of  the  penitentiary 
would  discharge  in  public.  For  example,  if  a  youth  were  to  commit  such  an 
offense  as  would  subject  him,  according  to  the  present  system  of  criminal 
legislation,  to  two  or  three  months'  confinement  in  Bridewell,  he  might  be 
handed  over  to  individuals  of  undoubted  good  character  and  substance,  under 
a  bond  that  they  should  be  answerable  for  his  proper  education,  employment 
and  reformation;  and  fulfillment  of  the  obligation  should  be  very  rigidly 
enforced. 

"The  principle  of  revenge  being  disavowed  and  abandoned,  there  could  be 
no  harm  in  following  any  mode  of  treatment,  whether  private  or  public,  that 
should  be  adequate  to  the  accomplishment  of  the  other  two  objects  of  crim- 
inal legislation  —  the  protection  of  society  and  the  reformation  of  the 
offender. 

"To  prevent  abuses  of  this  practice,  the  public  authorities  should  carefully 
ascertain  that  the  natural  qualities  of  the  offender  admitted  of  adequate 
improvement  by  private  treatment;  and,  secondly,  that  private  discipline  was 
actually  administered.  If  any  offender,  liberated  on  bond,  should  ever  re- 
appear as  a  criminal,  the  penalty  should  be  inexorably  enforced,  and  the 
culprit  should  never  again  be  liberated,  except  upon  a  verdict  finding  that 
his  reformation  had  been  completed  by  a  proper  system  of  training  in  a 
penitentiary. ' ' 

The  above  paragraphs  by  Combe  were  presented  to  students  of 
American  prison  management  in  a  volume  entitled :  ' '  Rationale  of 
Crime,"  with  notes  and  illustrations  by  Mrs.  E.  W.  Farnham,  the 


History  of  American  Prisons 


201 


matron  of  Mount  Pleasant  Prison,  in  1846.  In  short,  the  theory 
of  the  indeterminate  sentence,  of  parole,  and  subsequent  retreat- 
ment  of  the  offending  person  on  ''parole,'*  or  rather,  its  proposed 
equivalent  of  the  time,  were  all  thus  spread  before  the  American 
students  of  prison  matters  in  1846  —  but  it  was  thirty  years  before 
the  opening  of  Elmira  Reformatory,  and  in  the  State  prisons  of 
the  time  no  change  resulted  from  this  presentation,  by  an  enlight- 
ened ''prison  woman,"  of  a  really  great  penological  thinker  of  his 
time.  Even  the  phraseology  of  Combe  often  brings  to  us  the  very 
phrases  to-day  in  common  use,  and  many  a  parole  board,  now 
sitting  in  State  prison  or  reformatory,  would  listen  to  the  repetition 
of  Combe's  theorizing,  not  knowing  its  origin,  and  pronounce  the 
proposition:    "Exactly  what  is  now  being  done  by  us!" 

We  turn  from  Combe  to  a  study  of  the  industries  under  the  new 
system  at  the  new  prison  of  New  Jersey.  The  prison,  after  a  few 
years,  made  a  very  creditable  industrial  showing.  By  1841,  the 
governor  could  report  the  prison  out  of  debt,  with  a  small  surplus. 
The  yearly  deficits  or  surplus  earnings  were  as  follows : 


Years 

Earnings 

Expenses 

Deficit 

Surpliis 

1825-1829 

$97,995 

$77,347 


■t$5.i94 
*512 

*$20,648 

1836-1839 

1840 

1841 

*1,272 

1842 

*4,278 

1843 

*2,969 

1844 

*4,709 

*  Exclusive  of  salaries, 
t  Inclusive  of  salaries. 

The  greatly  increased  productivity  of  the  prison  was  due  in  part 
at  least  to  the  policy  of  keeping  the  prisoners,  for  purposes  of  both 
health  and  industry,  steadily  employed  in  their  cells.  In  1844,  the 
principal  keeper  reported  that 

*' under  our  system  no  great  degree  of  health  can  be  maintained  without  regu- 
lar employment.  This,  with  proper  attention  to  cleanliness,  wholesome  diet 
and  judicious  treatment,  appears  to  be  all  that  is  necessary,  except  in  a  few 
isolated  cases,  to  ensure  general  good  health. ' '  ^ 

The  activities  of  the  prison  industries  appear  from  the  keeper's 
statement  in  1844: 


Earnings. 

Weaving  $2,441  75 

Cordwaining  2,261  57 

Chair  making  5,105  08 

Sundries   757  10 


Expenses. 


Furniture  .. 
Provisions  . 
Hospital  .... 

Fuel  

Incidentals 
Interest  


$929  14 
4,183  46 

176  79 
1,432  08 

857  31 
16  92 


———————  7  595  70 

$10,056  50  Net  gain  $2*969  90 

Salaries,  as  well  as  expenses  of  repairs  and  improvements,  were 
paid  not  out  of  the  earnings  of  the  prison,  but  from  the  State 

«»  CouncD,  18^4,  p.  29. 


202 


History  of  American  Prisons 


treasury.  So  far  as  possible,  the  prison  aimed  to  employ  the 
prisoners  at  contract  labor,  but  opposed  the  entrance  of  the  con- 
tractor, through  his  agents,  into  the  prison. 

A  picture  of  the  prison  population  is  given  in  the  report  of  the 
inspectors  for  1844 : 


Length  of  Sentences. 

7  years  2 

years  3 

years  24 

years  13 

years  23 

yrs.  6  mos 6 


2  years  

1  yr.  6  mos. 


30 
12 
1  yr.  3  mos 1 


1  year  

9  months 
6  months 


19 

1 
1 


Life  1 

20  years  1 

15  years  3 

14  years  1 

12  years  1 

10  years  9 

8  years  3 

Year  Eeeeived  into  Prison. 

1837 2  prisoners      1841 9  prisoners 

1838 1  prisoner        1842 19  prisoners 

1839 3  prisoners      1843 58  prisoners 

1840 6  prisoners      1844 61  prisoners 

The  above  statistical  statement,  showing  no  prisoner  at  the 
prison  who  had  been  admitted  more  than  eight  years  previously, 
indicates  clearly  the  custom  of  pardoning  prisoners  by  the  end  of 
from  six  to  eight  years,  even  if  such  prisoners  had  been  committed 
for  very  long  terms,  or  even  for  life.  Harriet  Martineau,  a  very 
observant  traveler  in  the  United  States  in  the  **  thirties, ' '  stated 
that  every  one  of  the  prisoners  whom  she  conversed  with  in  the 
Eastern  Penitentiary  was  in  anxious  expectation  of  a  pardon. 

**A  sentence  to  life  imprisonment  is  generally  understood  to  mean  im- 
prisonment for  a  shorter  term  than  if  10  to  7  years  had  been  named."*" 

The  subjoined  table  shows  additional  significant  statistics  of  the 
same  period  of  the  New  Jersey  Prison : 
'          Convictions.                                   Ages. 

First 131            10-20 22 

20-30 74 

30-40  38 

40-50 16 

50-60 7 

60-70 2 

The  above  figures  are  to  be  taken  with  many  grains  of  salt,  as  to 
their  accuracy.  The  statements  of  convicts  as  to  age,  previous 
convictions,  habits  and  the  like,  have  always  been  fairly  unreliable. 
The  statements  are  colored  by  various  motives  and  in  general,  as 
can  be  readily  understood,  the  convict  is  not  prone  to  confess  earlier 
convictions.  Therefore,  the  first  column,  as  to  previous  convictions, 
is  hardly  to  be  regarded  as  accurate.  The  probabilities  are  that 
the  number  of  first  convictions,  in  New  Jersey  or  in  other  States, 
was  much  smaller  than  was  given. 

Apparently  the  attitude  of  the  board  of  inspectors  and  of  the 
warden,  at  the  end  of  the  period  we  have  now  under  consideration, 
was  humane  and  benevolent.  The  inspectors  recommended  shorter 
sentences,  fully  executed,  and  they  vigorously  opposed  the  practice 

*o  Society  in  America,  Vol.  II,  p.  288. 


Kace. 
White 98 


Second 21 

Third  6 

Fourth 1 


Colored. 


Male  .... 
Female 


History  of  American  Prisons  203 

of  granting  pardons.  Punishment,  they  maintained,  must  be  cer- 
tain in  order  to  be  effective.  The  warden  (known  as  the  *' Keeper'* 
or  '* Principal  Keeper")  stated  that  no  human  being  could  ever  be 
reformed  by  brutal  treatment.  An  over-stint  was  put  into  opera- 
tion. Men  in  the  past,  claimed  the  keeper,  had  been  wronged  out 
of  their  earnings.  He  laid  emphasis  upon  the  greater  importance 
in  the  prison  of  moral  reformation  than  of  great  profits.*^ 

The  attitude  of  the  inspectors  toward  some  payment  to  the  pris- 
oners for  their  work,  even  though  in  the  form  of  a  bonus  for  extra 
work,  was  indicative  of  a  changing  sentiment  in  this  period  among 
enlightened  prison  reformers.  In  earlier  decades,  the  prison  execu- 
tives had  opposed  the  *' over-stint "  because  of  its  application  by 
prisoners  to  contraband  articles  and  to  the  corruption  of  officers. 
But  in  time  it  became  clear  that  within  the  prison  as  well  as  outside 
of  it  there  must  be  a  potent  economic  or  moral  stimulus.  This 
insight  led  Dorothea  Dix  to  write  in  1845  of  American  prisons :  ^^ 

**The  best  mode  of  aiding  convicts  is,  so  to  apportion  their  tasks  in  prison 
as  to  give  to  the  industrious  the  opportunity  of  earning  a  sum  for  themselves 
by  *  overwork. '  A  man  usually  values  that  most  for  which  he  has  labored; 
he  uses  that  most  frugally  which  he  has  toiled  hour  by  hour  and  day  by  day 
to  acquire.  I  believe  every  convict  will  be  disposed  to  make  a  better  use  of 
the  money  he  earns  than  of  that  he  receives  gratuitously.  .  .  .  Indulged 
habits  of  dependence  create  habits  of  indolence,  and  indolence  opens  the 
portals  to     .     .     .     vice  and  crime." 

It  was  homely  and,  to  our  minds  of  to-day,  self-evident  truths 
that  the  prison  executives  and  prison  reformers  were  learning  in 
these  formative  years  of  the  Auburn  and  the  Pennsylvania  systems. 
They  were  new  to  them,  and  were  dilated  upon  in  the  cogent  and 
expressive  language  of  the  day. 

For  those  prisoners  who  had  proved  worthy  in  the  prison,  the 
inspectors  recommended  the  passage  of  a  law  restoring  citizenship 
rights,  which  had  been  forfeited  upon  conviction.  A  library  was 
installed  by  means  of  a  State  appropriation  of  $100,  and  the  books, 
of  religious,  historical  and  miscellaneous  nature,  were  distributed 
regularly  to  the  prisoners  during  the  year. 

*^  Reports  of  Inspectors  and  Keeper,  1844. 
*2  Dix.    Remarks,  p.  11. 


CHAPTER  XVII 


MARYLAND 

When  the  Englishman,  Crawford,  visited  the  Maryland  State 
Penitentiary  in  1832,  he  wrote  that  it  was  remarkable  for  nothing 
more  than  the  profits  arising  from  its  manufacture.^  And,  in 
truth,  the  Baltimore  institution  developed  in  the  period  between 
1832  and  1837  into  a  very  productive  factory,  ultimately  possessing 
shops  that  the  French  official  visitor,  Blouet,  described  as  the  best 
he  had  seen  in  any  American  prison.^  Directors  and  officials  were 
chosen  because  of,  the  industrial  capacity.  ' '  Product ' '  was  almost 
the  sole  ambition  of  the  administration.  The  older  prisoners  taught 
the  newcomers  the  prescribed  trades.  The  Boston  Prison  Discipline 
Society  early  cited  the  Maryland  Penitentiary  as  the  most  produc- 
tive in  the  country  ^ —  a  high  compliment  in  a  period  when  prisons 
that  failed  to  be  self-supporting  were  regarded  as  partial  failures. 

As  in  the  case  of  the  earliest  State  prisons  in  other  Eastern 
States,  the  State  prison  of  Maryland  was  organized  almost  entirely 
on  the  basis  and  methods  of  the  humane  Walnut  Street  Prison. 
The  high  reputation  of  the  Pennsylvania  institution  led  the  Mary- 
land Legislature  in  1804  to  provide  for  the  erection  of  a  State 
prison.  In  1809  a  further  law  established  in  detail  the  government 
of  the  prison,  modeled  on  the  daily  routine  of  Walnut  Street.^ 
Prisoners  were,  for  instance,  to  be  kept  in  solitary  confinement  for 
from  one-half  to  one-twentieth  of  their  sentence.  As  in  Philadel- 
phia, they  were  to  labor  every  day  in  the  year,  save  Sunday  and 
Christmas  Day,  or  when  under  punishment,  the  hours  being  8  in 
November,  December  and  January,  9  in  February  and  October,  and 
10  during  the  rest  of  the  year.  Even  the  separate  labor  account 
for  each  prisoner,  initiated  in  the  Philadelphia  prison,  was  em- 
bodied in  the  Maryland  law.  Prisoners  suffering  from  ''any  acute 
or  dangerous  distemper"  at  time  of  discharge  might  be  held  until 
sufficiently  cured.  On  admission,  the  prisoner  was  to  be  washed, 
cleaned,  and  segregated  until  regarded  as  fit  to  be  received  among 
the  other  prisoners.  In  short,  the  enlightened  principles  of  the 
first  reform  movement  were  copied  in  Maryland  law. 

Nevertheless,  the  Baltimore  prison  appears  only  infrequently 
in  its  early  history  to  have  striven  for  the  reformation  of  its 
inmates.  Crawford  found  that  the  prisoners  were  liable  to  be 
flogged  for  a  breach  of  the  regulations,  and  at  the  pleasure  of  the 
underkeepers,  as  at  Auburn,  without  requiring  previous  notice  to 
the  warden.^     Imprisonment,  said  Crawford,  was  very  far  from 

1  Crawford,  p.  22. 

2De  Metz   and    Blouet,   p.   24. 

s  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1829,  p.  264. 

*  Acts  of  Ass.,  etc.,  respecting  the  Penitentiary  of  Maryland,  1819,  p.  5. 

8  Crawford,  p.  22. 

[204] 


History  of  American  Prisons  205 

having  any  tendency  to  diminish  crime.  Blouet  found  that  prison- 
ers who  had  not  completed  their  tasks  at  the  end  of  the  day  were 
severely  punished,  and  could  not  enjoy  any  earnings  through 
**  over-stint/ '  until  they  should  have  caught  up,  through  such  over- 
stints,  with  their  regularly  assigned  daily  tasks.  However,  on 
Christmas  Day  the  slate  was  wiped  clean  for  those  who  had  fallen 
behind  in  their  industry,  and  a  new  account  was  opened.^ 

As  an  intensive  manufacturing  center,  in  which  any  real  welfare 
of  prisoners  was  subordinated  to  profits,  the  Maryland  penitentiary 
had  a  varied  career  in  the  early  decades  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
The  prison  was  opened  in  1812  ^  in  the  city  of  Baltimore,  three- 
fourths  of  a  mile  from  the  center  of  the  city,*^  with  a  wall-enclosed 
area  of  about  four  acres,  and  at  a  cost  of  $196,000.  In  the  opening 
month,  51  convicts  were  removed  to  the  penitentiary  from  the 
public  roads,  to  serve  the  remainder  of  their  sentence  therein.* 
Like  other  prison  buildings  of  this  period,  this  prison,  156  feet  long 
and  36  feet  wide,  contained  large  night-rooms,  36  in  number, 
holding  from  7  to  10  inmates  each. 

In  time,  the  same  demoralization  developed  out  of  these  promis- 
cuous dormitories  that  led  in  the  other  States  to  the  downfall  of 
the  first  penitentiary  system.  A  female  department  with  6  rooms 
occupied  the  southern  end  of  the  second  story  of  the  prison,  and 
9  solitary  cells,  for  punishment  purposes,  were  in  the  northern  end 
of  the  third  story.  These  were  the  conditions  found  when  the 
Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society  began  to  issue  its  annual  reports 
on  American  prisons  in  1826. 

By  January,  1825,  the  convict  population  numbered  307,  of  which 
62  were  females ;  of  the  245  males,  93  were  colored,  and  almost  all 
the  women  prisoners  were  negroes.  Sentences  ranged  from  3 
months  to  21  years.^  The  principal  industry  of  the  male  prisoners 
was  weaving,  carried  on  by  the  State,  and  not  by  contractors.  The 
sun-to-sun  labor  of  the  prisoners  on  week  days  was  broken  on  the 
Sabbath  by  religious  instruction  by  Methodist  clergymen,  morning 
and  evening,  and  by  a  Sabbath  School  that  taught  also  the  three  R^s. 

A  very  human  touch  entered  into  the  industrial  history  of  the 
institution  when,  in  1822,  Mrs.  Perijo  was  appointed  matron  of  the 
female  department  ^^ —  a  section  of  the  prison  heretofore,  as  in  other 
prisons,  in  charge  of  a  male  keeper.  Mrs.  Perijo  was,  in  her  way, 
an  Elizabeth  Fry,  for  she  dominated  the  vicious  and  debauched 
women  prisoners  by  kindness  and  common  sense,  turned  an  average 
annual  deficit  of  $1,099  into  an  average  surplus  of  $492,  and  in 
addition  organized  educational  classes  in  the  three  R's,  besides 
teaching  the  women  simple  industries  and  completely  changing  the 
discipline  and  morale  of  her  department.  She  is  the  first  prison 
matron  of  whom  we  have  found  record,  and  like  the  early  peniten- 
tiary system  in  Philadelphia,  she  also  set  the  standard  high  from 
the  outset. 

« De  Metz   and   Blouet,   p.    24. 
'  B.  P.  D.  S..  1827,  p.  120. 

*  Crawford,  App.  94. 

•  B.  P.  D.  S..  1827,  p.  120. 

10  B.    P.    D.,    S.,    1836,    p.    34. 


206  History  op  American  Prisons 

The  prison  was  distinctly  a  going  concern  in  1828,  in  which  year 
the  earnings  exceeded  the  expenses  by  $9,804,  not  including  $3,522 
repaid  on  account  of  loans.^^  During  the  five  previous  years  the 
earnings  had  been  large,  and  the  penitentiary  in  1829  had  an  active 
capital  of  $76,927,  principally  earnings.  In  1828,  the  female 
department,  under  Mrs.  Perijo,  had  earned  $1,355  net. 

In  1829,  affected  by  the  strong  influences  of  the  Auburn  system^ 
and  by  the  obvious  failure  of  the  prevailing  system  to  maintain 
discipline,  and  to  be  anything  but  a  nursery  of  crime, ^^  the  State 
erected  a  new  prison  building,  containing  320  separate  cells.  It  i» 
significant  that  this  building,  though  constructed  on  the  ''arcade 
plan"  (with  a  central  corridor),  and  with  cells  facing  the  corridor 
(instead  of  being  placed  back  to  back,  as  at  Auburn),  drew  the 
high  praise  of  the  Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society,^^  which  shows 
that  the  support  by  that  society  of  the  Auburn  system  was  a 
support  of  Auburn  methods  especially  of  silence,  separation  at 
night  and  association  at  labor  during  the  day,  rather  than  an 
advocacy  necessarily  of  the  so-called  inside  cellblock  which  has  in 
tradition  become  inseparable  from  the  so-called  Auburn  system 
itself.  In  short,  the  vehement  objections  by  the  Boston  Society 
to  the  Pennsylvania  system  were  not  to  rooms  abutting  on  a  central 
corridor,  but  to  rooms  in  which  the  prisoners  not  only  slept  but' 
worked  in  solitude. 

An  interesting  observation  of  Dorothea  Dix  was,  relative  to  this^ 

new  cellblock,  that  she  much  preferred  the  method  of  architecture 

which  ranged  the  cells  against  the  walls  instead  of  throwing  them 

into  the  center. 

"1  greatly  prefer  this  arrangement,  affording  as  it  does  advantages  of 
light  and  air,  unknown  in  ranges  of  center  cells,  so  inconvenient  and  tomb- 
like  in  construction  as  all  those  are. ' ' " 

The  new  cellhouse,  5  stories  high,  contained  a  central  passage 
15  feet  wide,  open  from  the  first  floor  to  the  roof.  Galleries  fronted 
each  row  of  cells  above  the  first  floor.  The  cells  were  6  feet  6  inches^ 
in  length,  3  feet  7  inches  wide,  and  7  feet  high.^^  In  each  cell  a 
glazed  window,  3  feet  high  and  4  inches  in  breadth  on  the  outer 
surface,  broadening  to  12  inches  on  the  inner  surface  of  the  external 
wall  of  the  cell,  gave  light  and  air.  The  cells  had  iron-grated  doors 
—  which  led  to  difficulties,  because  of  ready  verbal  communication 
between  prisoners  on  opposite  sides  of  the  corridors. 

Although  much  nearer  topographically  to  Philadelphia  than  to 
Auburn,  Maryland  adopted  the  Auburn  system,  because  a  com- 
mittee of  the  board  of  directors  of  the  penitentiary  had  reported, 
after  visiting  several  prisons  in  Pennsylvania  and  New  York  in 
1828,  that  the  Pennsylvania  system  was  expensive  in  construction,, 
presented  difficulties  in  the  supply  of  food  and  exercise,  and  fur- 

11  Jol.      House  of  Delegates,  1822,  p.  139. 
«  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1829,  p.  264,  304,  324. 
"  Dix.     Remarks,  p.  47. 
"  Crawford.     App.,  p.  94. 


History  of  American  Prisons  207 

nished  no  mental  occupation  (this  latter  opinion  being  based  on  the 
earlier  plan  of  solitary  confinement  without  labor  at  the  Eastern 
Penitentiary.)" 

With  the  advent  of  the  new  building,  the  Auburn  system  was  put 
into  operation,  but  far  less  rigidly  than  in  the  parent  institution. 
Indeed,  an  educational  development  of  significance  occurred,  in  the 
establishment  of  a  general  system  of  instruction  of  all  convicts. 
All  parts  of  the  Sabbath  Day  not  devoted  to  religious  interests  were 
devoted  to  secular  study.  From  this  mental  occupation  throughout 
the  Sabbath  resulted,  according  to  the  report  of  the  prison  board," 
*^the  entire  destruction  of  the  improper  indulgences  and  corrupt 
association,  to  which  exemption  from  labor  on  Sunday  afforded 
them  more  opportunity  than  on  any  other  day.'^  On  week  days 
also,  the  convicts  were  allowed  to  read  and  study,  **  after  perform- 
ing an  amount  of  labor  commensurate  with  the  cost  of  their 
support. ' ' 

The  board  reported  as  follows : 

'*  Convicts  are  not  only  capable  of  intellectual  culture,  but  they  gladly 
resort  to  the  means  of  instruction  .  .  .  which  incites  to  greater  industry. 
Since  the  institution  of  our  school,  there  has  been  less  vice  and  immorality, 
and  the  aspect  of  the  prisoners  has  been  greatly  improved.  .  .  .  We  are 
confident  that  the  only  plan  for  effectuating  the  design  of  penal  law  is  to 
blend  productive  labor  with  useful  education." 

This  was  an  extremely  modern  statement  for  the  period,  and 
indeed,  the  Maryland  penitentiary  seemingly  led  the  way  in  the 
extent  of  the  scholastic  education  given  to  the  inmates,  among  the 
prisons  of  the  period."  This  educational  project  lasted  for  several 
years.  In  1833,  there  were  211  convicts  in  the  Sabbath  School  who 
had  originally  been  unable  to  read  or  write,^^  instructed  by  10 
volunteer  teachers  from  the  city.  The  colored  convicts  were 
especially  appreciative  of  the  school. 

Crawford  found  in  1832  that  the  disciplinary  measures  of  the 
prison  were  relatively  rigorous.  The  lock-step  was  used  in  march- 
ing the  prisoners  in  mass ;  there  was  the  customary  requirement  of 
silence,  and  all  heads  must  face  in  the  same  direction.  Flogging 
was  allowed  as  a  punishment.  The  prisoners  were  shaved  on  one 
side  of  the  head,  which  the  Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society 
reported  in  1838  was  *' revolting, ' '  and  not  found  in  any  other 
prison.  The  hair  was  thus  half -shaven,  until  three  weeks  before 
the  prisoner  was  to  be  discharged. 

Nevertheless,  the  prisoners  were  able  to  communicate  with  each 
other,  and  sometimes  the  males  with  the  females.  Punishments 
were  solitary  confinement,  or  whipping,  or  both.  Ordinarily  five 
lashes,  there  could  be  given  as  many  as  13,  or  13  repeatedly. 
Solitary  confinement  was  seldom  for  more  than  10  or  12  days. 
The  prisoners  were  never  chained,  shackled  or  fettered  except  for 
attempts  to  escape.    Then  a  small  yoke  was  worn  about  the  neck. 

^"5  Report  of  Committee  appointed  by  Boaxd  of  Directors  of  Maryland  Penitentiary. 
1828.  p.  8. 

"  B.  P.  D.  S..  1831.  p.  504. 

"  B.  P.  D.  S.,  p.  504. 

"  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1833.  p.  620. 


208  History  of  American  Prisons 

The  prison  garb  was  of  black  and  white  alternate  stripes,  the 
material  cotton  and  wool.    The  stripes  were  about  one  inch  wide. 

The  prison  had  a  hospital,  a  room  45  feet  square,  with  cast-iron 
beds,  and  a  small  room  used  for  cooking.  The  physician  visited 
the  prison  nearly  every  morning.  Two  convicts  acted  as  nurses. 
The  convalescent  patients  could  take  the  air,  and  exercise  in  the 
long  corridor.  Each  new  patient  was  vaccinated,  and  if  the  small- 
pox scare  developed,  the  whole  prison  population.  Insane  patients^ 
were  not  removed  to  a  hospital  outside  the  prison.  If  they  had  not 
recovered  by  the  expiration  of  their  sentences,  they  might  be 
retained  at  the  prison. 

Meanwhile,  through  the  thirties,  the  industrial  condition  of  the 
prison  fluctuated  seriously.  In  1837  and  1838  there  was  a  general 
derangement  and  prostration  of  the  trade  of  the  country.^^  The 
expenses  over  earnings  of  the  prison  were  $16,934.  Under  the  old 
law  of  1817,  an  agent  or  storekeeper  had  been  appointed  to  market 
the  goods  manufactured  by  the  penitentiary  through  a  store  rented 
in  Baltimore.  It  was  ultimately  found  that  it  was  impossible  ta 
compete  with  the  commission  merchants  of  the  city  on  even  terms, 
and  so  the  prison  was  forced  to  sell  to  these  same  commission  mer- 
chants at  a  discount  exceeding  the  expense  of  rent  of  the  store,  and 
of  the  salaries  of  the  agent  and  his  assistant.  In  1835  or  there- 
abouts, the  store  was  abandoned;  the  direct  sales  to  commission 
merchants  continued.^" 

However,  discontent  among  the  '^mechanics'*  was  brewing,  and 
1,300  citizens  of  Baltimore  petitioned  the  House  of  Delegates  in 
1838  for  the  abolition  of  the  penitentiary  system,  so  far  as  it 
conflicted  with  the  interest  of  mechanics.^^  In  1842,  the  directors- 
of  the  penitentiary  sent  a  special  committee  to  study  the  industrial 
methods  and  problems  of  other  Eastern  prisons.  The  committee 
reported  that  the  branches  then  conducted  in  the  Maryland  peni- 
tentiary did  not  conflict  with  the  interests  of  local  mechanics,  while 
on  the  other  hand  nearly  paying  expenses.  Vigorously  opposing^ 
any  introduction  of  the  contract  labor  system  into  the  Baltimore 
prison,  the  committee  said,  speaking  of  the  labor  troubles  in  New 
York: 

*'In  this  manner  the  State  of  New  York  has  unguardedly  created  a  priv- 
ileged class  in  the  community,  and  thereby  established  a  principle  particu- 
larly odious  and  intolerable  to  the  mind  and  feelings  of  the  people.  .  .  . 
Articles  furnished  to  the  market  (by  the  Maryland  penitentiary)  should  be 
restricted  to  those  classes  that  belong  to  the  widest  range  of  trade.  In  the 
main  the  articles  produced  are  work  of  a  kind  not  usually  engaged  in  by 
citizens  of  the  State. ''^^ 

The  end  of  the  period  we  have  been  considering  found,  therefore, 
the  prison  in  a  serious  industrial  condition.  Its  earlier  prosperous 
days  were  no  more.  From  1822  to  1839  it  had  operated  so  success- 
fully that  it  had  received  no  State  aid,  save  appropriations  for  the 
salaries  of  officers,  which  were  defrayed  until  1828.    From  then  on, 

"  B.  p.  D.  S.,  1839,  p.  356. 

»  Report  of  Select  Committee  on  the  Penitentiary,  1836,  p.  5. 

21J0I.     House  of  Delegates,  1836,  p.  195. 

22  Report  of  Committee  on  Prison  Manufactures,  1842,  p.  13. 


History  of  American  Prisons  209 

until  1838,  the  penitentiary  met  all  its  expenses  of  $69,215.  It 
manufactured  almost  exclusively  cotton  and  woolen  cloth,  which 
had  a  constant  sale,  with  large  profits.     The  mercantile  crisis  in 

1837  brought  serious  depreciation  in  prices,  and  since  then  there 
had  continued  to  be  a  gradual  price  depreciation,  particularly  in 
articles  manufactured  by  hand-looms. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  was  now,  in  1842,  apparently  impracticable 
to  further  develop  other  branches  in  the  penitentiary.    Losses  since 

1838  had  totalled  $46,000.  There  was  a  diminution  in  the  number 
of  convicts  being  committed  to  the  prison  —  and  the  ''honest 
mechanic"  was  objecting  impressively  to  the  competition  of  prison- 
made  goods  in  the  open  market.^ 

^  Report  of  the  Committee  on  Manufactures,  1842,  pp.  4-5. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 


VIRGINIA 


That  the  State  of  Virginia,  the  ''Mother  of  Presidents,"  should 
have  built  her  State  prison  mainly  according  to  plans  furnished  by 
Thomas  Jefferson,  when  he  was  ambassador  to  France,  is  an  inter- 
esting penological  fact.  Jefferson  learned,  while  in  Paris,  of  the 
novel  plans  of  a  French  architect  for  a  *' well-contrived  edifice  on 
the  solitary  plan. ' '  ^  The  drawings  that  Jefferson  procured  being 
too  large,  he  redrew  them  on  a  smaller  scale,  and  sent  the  plans  to 
Virginia  to  those  directors  who  had  been  commissioned  by  the 
Legislature  to  build  the  State  Capitol  and  to  devise  a  State  prison 
plan.^ 

Thomas  Jefferson  had  become  sincerely  interested,  as  early  as 
1776,  in  the  reform  of  the  criminal  laws  of  Virginia.  In  a  com- 
mittee of  the  Legislature  of  that  year,  the  drafting  of  a  new 
criminal  code  fell  to  him.  The  committee  agreed  that  the  death 
penalty  should  be  abolished  except  for  treason  and  murder,  and 
that  for  other  felonies  there  should  be  established  hard  labor  on  the 
public  works,  and  in  some  cases  the  lex  talionis.  **How  this 
revolting  principle  came  to  obtain  our  approbation  I  do  not  remem- 
ber," wrote  Jefferson. 

In  1785,  the  proposed  code  almost  passed  the  House  of  Delegates, 
being  beaten  by  only  a  solitary  vote,  the  public  rage  against  horse 
thievery  killing  the  bill. 

**In  America  the  inhabitants  let  their  horses  go  at  large  in  the  enclosed 
lands,  which  are  so  extensive  as  to  maintain  them  together.  It  is  easy,  there- 
fore, to  steal  them  and  easy  to  escape.  Therefore  the  laws  are  obliged  to 
oppose  these  temptations  with  a  heavier  degree  of  punishment.  For  this 
reason  the  stealing  of  a  horse  is  punished  more  severely  than  stealing  the 
same  value  in  any  other  form. '  "^ 

In  1796,  the  Legislature  resumed  the  subject  of  a  revision  of 
criminal  law  and  prison  discipline,  revised  the  penal  laws  after  the 
model  of  Pennsylvania,  and  adopted  solitary  instead  of  public 
labor,  as  well  as  establishing  a  gradation  in  the  duration  of 
confinement.*  The  prison,  begun  in  1796  in  Richmond,  received 
its  first  prisoners  in  1800.  Its  construction  was  unlike  that  of 
any  other  prison  in  this  country.  It  was  located  on  a  high  hill, 
about  one  mile  south-west  of  the  State  House,  and  about  two  miles 
west  of  the  James  River  .^ 

The  cells  were  arranged  in  a  brick  building  in  the  form  of  a 
crescent,  two  stories  above  the  basement.^    The  cells  were  12  feet 

1  Writings  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  Vol.  1,  p.  58. 

2  Writings  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  Vol.  4,  p.  158. 

8  Pettigrove,  in  "  Correction  and  Prevention.     Vol.  II,  p.  30. 
*  Writings  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  Vol.   I,  p.   64.      (Edition  edited  by  P.  L.  Ford, 
Putman's.) 

s  B.  P.  D.  S..  1827,  p.  128. 

[210] 


History  of  American  Prisons  211 

long,  614  feet  wide,  and  9  feet  high,  with  arched  ceilings.^  It  ia 
fair  to  infer  from  the  size  of  the  cells  that  it  was  originally  in- 
tended, as  Jefferson  indicated,  that  each  prisoner  should  labor  in 
solitude  in  his  cell.  Not  only  did  this  not  occur,  but  within  five 
years  of  the  opening  of  the  prison,  three  or  four  prisoners  were 
already  being  lodged  together,  and  the  evils  of  conspiracies, 
immorality,  and  mutual  teaching  of  crime  were  already  flourishing/ 

Not  until  after  1823,  when  a  disastrous  fire  caused  necessary 
renovations  to  the  prison  building,  were  separate  cells  in  sufficient 
numbers  provided.  In  1823,  a  Legislative  committee  reported  that 
it  was  surprising  that  so  few  of  the  convicts  died,  when  one  reflected 
that  they  were  almost  totally  deprived  of  healthy  air,  and  literally 
crowded  together  at  night  in  close  and  small  rooms.^  A  year  later, 
the  directors  reported  that  the  Virginia  penitentiary  was  so  con- 
structed as  to  permit  unrestrained  intercourse  among  the  prisoner* 
day  and  night.  '^It  was  both  a  prison  and  a  workshop,  in  which 
the  convicts  worked  in  groups  and  slept  in  clusters. ' '  ^ 

The  Virginia  *  *  Jail  and  Penitentiary  House ' '  was  both  in  location 
and  construction  a  monumental  blunder,  which  resulted  in  not 
only  permanent  and  serious  difficulties  of  administration,  but  in 
disease  and  death  to  the  inmates.  Established  with  high  hopes  of 
reformatory  influences,^"  the  prison  was  so  located  as  to  be  later 
the  center  of  an  obnoxious,  if  not  noxious  atmosphere.  The  prison 
was  thus  described  by  a  new  and  horrified  superintendent^ 
C.  S.  Morgan,  in  1832:^^ 

*'The  penitentiary  is  situated  on  an  eminence  between  two  rivers,  that 
come  together  and  empty  into  a  canal,  on  the  margin  of  the  James  Eiver, 
into  which  all  the  filth  of  the  prison  and  the  western  part  of  the  city  of 
Eichmond  is  carried  and  deposited.  This  deposit  increases  annually,  and  i» 
less  than  200  yards  from  the  prison  buildings,  and  the  river  less  than  40O 
yards.  During  the  summer  the  water  remains  stagnant  and  full  of  putrid 
matter.  The  whole  mass  constantly  casts  off  offensive  miasma,  wafted 
throughout  the  prison.  .  .  .  How  could  the  Legislature  devise  a  scheme 
of  punishment  more  dreadful  to  the  human  mind,  or  less  qualified  to  reform 
the  moral  condition  of  the  offender?*' 

Morgan  found  over  a  dozen  cells  or  dungeons  designed  for  soli- 
tary confinement;  these  cells  were  dark,  damp  and  underground. 
He  found  —  a  custom  descending  from  the  initial  law  of  1798  — 
that  the  inmates  served  a  considerable  portion  of  their  sentences  in 
such  solitary  confinement.  The  prison  itself  was  so  damp  at  times 
that  moisture  coagulated  upon  the  walls, ^^  and  there  was  no  method 
of  heating  any  of  the  cells.  Prisoners'  feet  had  been  frozen  while 
in  solitary  confinement  in  the  cells.  These  cells  had  been  pro- 
nounced by  Superintendent  Morgan's  predecessor.  Superintendent 
Samuel  L.  Parsons,  a  Quaker  originally  from  Philadelphia, 
imminently  dangerous  to  health  and  sometimes  to  life.  There  were, 
according  to  Parsons,  comparatively  few  prisoners  whose  constitu- 

*  Crawford.     App. 

'  Jol.  House  of  Delegates,  1805,  p.  90. 

*  .Tol.  House  of  Delegates,  1823,  Report  of  Penitentiary  Coram. 
».Tol.  House  of  Delegates,  1823-24,  Report  of  Directors,  p.  31. 
10  Preamble  to  Amendment  to  Penal  Laws,  1798. 

"  Report  of  Superintendent,  Jol.  House  of  Delegates,  1832-33,  Document  1. 
"B.  P.  D.   S.,  1827,  p.  168. 


212 


History  of  American  Prisons 


tions  were  not  injured  by  them.  The  ordinary  cells  in  the  first 
and  second  story  were  light  and  airy,  but  not  warmed,  and  were 
exposed  on  two  sides  to  the  cold.  Before  the  alterations  of  1824, 
even  these  cells  had  been  dark  and  close.  To  equip  the  prison  with 
a  heating  system  always  seemed  a  prohibitive  expense. 

The  design  of  the  prison  made  the  proper  inspection  by  keepers 
almost  impossible.  The  cell  doors  were  of  wood,  preventing  inspec- 
tion at  night.  Yet  prisoners  could  always  communicate  with  each 
other.  In  winter,  since  both  ends  of  the  cell  were  exposed  to  the 
air,  there  was  no  convenient  place  for  a  sentinel  to  pass  the  night 
near  the  cells.^^  In  1824,  for  the  first  time,  a  wall  was  built  around 
the  prison,  some  20  feet  high,  to  prevent  escapes.  This  resulted  in 
a  most  serious  interruption  to  the  circulation  of  air  throughout  the 
buildings.     In  1834,  it  was  said  by  Superintendent  Morgan  that 

*' whether  the  prison  be  viewed  as  a  mere  engine  of  torture  for  offenses  com- 
mitted, or  whether  of  terror  to  prevent  crime,  or  whether  it  be  viewed  as  a 
school  to  reform  felons,  or  a  manufacturing  establishment  to  extract  from  the 
vicious  the  means  to  defray  the  expenses  of  their  own  punishment,  humanity 
and  the  public  interest  alike  demand  a  thorough  examination  and  removal 
of  the  causes  of  misery,  disease  and  mortality."" 

Throughout  its  early  history,  the  Virginia  penitentiary  had  there- 
fore a  large  death  rate,  which  sometimes  became  appalling. 
Imprisonment  within  the  limits  of  100  yards  square,  and  the  causes 
above  mentioned,  had  brought  to  the  prison  by  Morgan's  time  a 
prevalence  of  disease  that  caused  each  prisoner,  on  the  average,  to 
be  incarcerated  in  the  hospital  several  times  a  year.  The  following 
was  the  death  record  from  1800  to  1832 : 


Period 

Prisoners 
received 

Prisoners 
died 

Per  cent 
died 

1800-1810 

450 
603 
625 

88 

22 

58 

163 

68 

5 

1810-1820 

10 

1821-1830 

26 

1831-1832 

77 

The  appalling  climax  was  reached  in  1832,  when  39  prisoners 
were  received  and  47  prisoners  died.  It  was,  however,  in  this  year 
that  the  cholera  raged  in  the  prison,  with  147  cases,  of  which  27 
terminated  fatally. 

Morgan  knocked  great  windows  into  the  outside  walls,  built  a 
respectable  hospital,  and  succeeded  in  getting  the  Legislature  mate- 
rially to  lessen  the  periods  of  solitary  confinement.  The  results 
were  as  follows :  ^^ 

Proportion  of  Deaths 
to  Population. 
1800  to  1824,  at  which  time  the  high  outer  wall  was  built-.         1         to         10.5 

1825  to  1833,  during  which  the  high  wall  stood 1         to  3.7 

1834  to  1839  1         to         12.7 

"  Jol.  House  of  Delegates,  1832-33,  Document  1. 

1*  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1827,  p.  129. 

"  Jol.  House  of  Delegates,  1838-1839,  Document  1,  Superintendent's  Report. 


History  of  American  Prisons  213 

There  were,  of  course,  other  serious  factors  contributing  to  the 
high  death  rate  of  this  institution.  The  inhumanly  long  periods 
of  solitary  confinement  played  a  leading  role  in  this  tragedy.  The 
law  of  1796  provided  —  as  did  the  Pennsylvania  law  —  that  each 
convict  should  pass  not  more  than  one-half  nor  less  than  one- 
twelfth  of  his  sentence  in  solitary  confinement.  Whereas  other 
States  in  general  did  not  put  this  law  into  very  serious  effect, 
Virginia  adhered  to  it  with  horrible  fidelity,  particularly  during  the 
long  superintendency  of  Mr.  Parsons.  By  law,  the  first  six  months 
were  passed  in  a  dark,  labor-less  inactivity.  As  the  number  of 
admissions  grew,  literal  obedience  to  the  solitary  confinement 
section  of  the  law  became  difficult.  In  1815,  Superintendent  Par- 
sons, recently  appointed,  advocated  the  abrogation  of  the  law, 
because  it  could  not  be  carried  into  effect,  there  being  then  only 
6  solitary  cells  available.^^  The  law,  however,  was  not  amended, 
and  in  1824  Mr.  Parsons  stated  that  the  lives  of  most  of  these 
prisoners,  doomed  to  6  months  of  uninterrupted  and  dark  solitary 
confinement,  were  in  imminent  danger.^^  The  solitary  confinement 
law  was  nevertheless  rigidly  enforced. 

At  this  time  there  was  coupled  therewith,  as  a  severe  depressant 
of  hope  in  the  prisoner's  breast,  an  equally  rigid  enforcement  of 
the  law  prohibiting  the  Governor  from  granting  pardons.  The 
hope  of  pardon  had  been  in  the  earliest  days  of  the  Virginia  institu- 
tion an  instrument  leading  to  good  conduct  and  a  fair  degree  of 
health.  We  have  already  seen,  in  States  like  New  York  and 
Pennsylvania,  to  what  an  excessively  liberal  extent  the  chief  execu- 
tives of  the  States  had  exercised  their  demoralizing  prerogative 
of  pardon.  Prison  lost  its  terror  and  justice  her  power,  in  the  eyes 
of  the  public,  when  criminals  so  easily  regained  their  liberty. 
Therefore,  in  spite  of  the  obvious  tendency  of  the  hope  of  pardon 
to  stimulate  the  prisoner  to  good  work^^  and  good  conduct,  the 
power  of  pardon  was  through  many  years  exercised  with  far  too 
great  liberality,"  and  in  1823  the  Executive  was  deprived  of  the 
power  of  pardon. 

In  1825,  Superintendent  Parsons  traced  the  high  mortality  of 
the  prison  partly  to  the  mental  despair  of  the  prisoner,  cut  off 
from  hope  of  mercy,  and  doomed  to  serve  the  entire  period  of  his 
sentence,  with  the  required  solitary  confinement,  but  without  the 
hope  of  executive  clemency.    Mr.  Parsons  reported : 

'*  Whenever  a  convict  sentenced  for  life  has  been  seriously  attacked  by 
disease,  he  has  sunk  under  it.  There  has  not  been  a  single  instance  where  a 
convict,  whose  sentence  was  for  life,  ever  recovered  from  indisposition. 
.  .  .  Nothing  has  presented  itself  more  destructive  to  the  health  and  con- 
stitution of  the  convict  than  the  six  months'  close  and  uninterrupted  solitary 
confinement  upon  first  reception.     .     .     .*'^ 

Parsons  recommended  the  shortening  of  the  period  of  solitary 
confinement  on  reception  and  the  repetition  of  three  months  of 
solitary  confinement  immediately  preceding  the  convict 's  discharge. 

"  Jol.  House  of  Delegates,  1816,  App. 

"  Jol.  House  of  Delegates,  1824-25,     Governor's  Message,  App.   5. 

"  Jol.  House  of  Delegates,  Governor's  Message,  1807. 

"  Jol.  House  of  Delegates,  1822-23.    Report  of  Pen.  Comm. 

20  Jol.  House  of  Delegates,  1825-26,  App.,  Superintendent's  Report,  p.  5. 


214  History  of  American  Prisons 

The  prison  physician  stated  that  the  low  diet  (bread  and  water)  in 
solitary  confinement  during  six  months  produced  scurvy  and  debili- 
tated the  system  so  that  a  prisoner  hardly  ever  recovered  from  it» 
effects.  Apparently  to  offset  the  high  death  rate,  he  recommended 
that  the  sixth  months'  solitary  confinement  be  at  the  close  of  the 
convict's  term!  Should  the  prisoner  die  afterwards,  he  would  no 
longer  be  in  prison! 

In  1826  the  Legislature  lessened  the  initial  period  of  solitary 
confinement  to  three  months,  and  added  a  three  months'  period 
at  the  conclusion  of  the  convict's  term,  which  should  be  the  bitter 
*  *  crack  of  the  whip, ' '  that  would  warn  the  convict  never  to  commit 
crime  again.  In  1832,  the  Legislative  committee  advocated  the 
entire  abandonment  of  solitary  confinement  at  the  end  of  the 
prisoner's  sentence.  There  was  no  substantial  benefit  from  it.  It 
was  injurious  to  health.  It  obliterated  habits  of  industry  acquired 
in  prison,  and  abstracted  the  best  time  and  labor  of  the  convicts.^^ 

In  1833,  the  law  was  amended  to  provide  that  the  amount  of  time 
passed,  by  sentence,  in  solitary  confinement  should  not  exceed  one- 
twelfth  of  the  entire  sentence,  and  should  not  exceed  one  month  at 
any  time.^  Morgan,  the  new  superintendent,  was  opposed  to  soli- 
tary confinement  at  all,  save  for  punishment  for  violation  of  prison 
rules.  Each  convict  was  now  placed  in  solitary  confinement  for  one 
week  in  each  six  months,  and  for  an  entire  month  during  the  last 
year  of  his  term.^  This  reduced  the  total  number  of  days  of  soli- 
tary confinement  in  1835  to  2,719,  as  against  3,695  in  the  previous- 
year.^*  In  1838,  the  Governor  urged  further  decrease  of  such 
punishment,  and  in  some  cases  its  entire  abolition.  By  1840,  the 
solitary  confinement  record  for  the  year  totalled  only  399  days, 
about  a  tenth  of  what  it  was  in  1834.^^^ 

We  have  presented  in  really  gruesome  detail  the  above  only  too 
gradual  mitigation  of  solitary  confinement  in  Virginia  because  it 
illustrates  more  graphically  than  we  have  found  in  any  other 
State  not  only  the  cruelty,  horror  and  danger  to  life  of  the  practice^ 
but  also  its  futility.  When  prisoners  were  decreasingly  subject  to 
long  periods  of  such  treatment  —  and  when  the  prison  was  ulti- 
mately ''aired  out" — health  increased,  and  the  annual  mortality 
rate  went  down.  But,  at  its  lowest  rate,  the  Virginia  penitentiary 
still  occupied  a  notorious  place  among  American  prisons.  Super- 
intendent Parsons  claimed  in  1829  that  the  high  death  rate  in  the 
Virginia  penitentiary  was  due  in  recent  years  to  ill  health  because 
of  the  cessation  of  pardons.^^  However,  a  comparison  of  the 
Virginia  prison  and  the  Connecticut  State  Prison  at  Wethersfield 
destroys  the  superintendent's  argument,  for  in  Connecticut  also 
there  was  no  exercise  of  executive  clemency,  and  the  pardonings  of 
the  Legislature  were  very  infrequent. 

21  Jol.  House  of  Delegates,  1832-33,  Document  30. 

22  Jol.  House  of  Delegates,  1833-34,  Governor's  Message,  Document  1,  p.  128. 
28  Jol.   House  of  Delegates,    1834-35,   Document   7. 

2*  Jol.  House  of  Delegates,  1835-36,  Document  7. 
28  Jol.  House  of  Delegates,  1840-41,  Document  9. 
»  Jol.  House  of  Delegates,  1828-29,  App..  p.  6. 


History  of  American  Prisons  215 

Indeed,  it  is  very  difficult  to  find  in  the  entire  course  of  the 
administration  of  the  Virginia  penitentiary  during  the  period  from 
1800  to  1844  any  evidence  of  an  enduring  humanitarian  effort  to 
reform,  or  even  to  deal  with  prisoners  according  to  the  best  prin- 
ciples of  penal  justice  of  the  period.  During  the  entire  span  of 
the  44  years  under  our  study,  there  was  no  chaplain,  nor  were  there 
any  fairly  regularly  conducted  Sabbath  services  until  1835.^ 
Intermittent  preaching  was  held,  when  local  clergymen  could  be 
obtained.  No  Sabbath  School  was  established,  nor  was  secular 
instruction  given  in  the  three  R's,  though  in  more  northern  prisons 
this  was  common.  Parsons  reported  in  1830  that  there  was  no 
room  in  the  prison  large  enough  to  assemble  convicts  in,  and  the 
prison  yard  was  used  in  good  weather .^^  He  wrote  in  1826:  **The 
sole  object  of  American  prisons  is  not  reformation.^'  The  belief 
that  through  reformatory  influences  prisoners  would  be  regenerated 
and  turned  out  into  the  community  good  and  useful  citizens  had 
produced,  according  to  Parsons,  a  sickly  and  mistaken  administra- 
tion of  the  American  penitentiary  system,  teaching  the  convicts  to 
believe  that  they  were  merely  unfortunate  beings  (guilty  of  no 
crime),  and  real  objects  of  commiseration,  claiming  benevolence 
beyond  the  necessities  of  the  poor  and  honest  members  of  society, 
who  had  committed  no  crime,  and  violated  no  law.  There  had  been 
too  much  of  a  sickly  and  squeamish  sympathy  practiced  in  most 
of  the  prisons,  wrote  Parsons.^^ 

The  prison  served,  therefore,  two  purposes.  It  was  a  place  of 
incarceration  and  deterrence,  and  also  of  industrial  activity.  Even 
by  1805  it  was  felt  that  the  convicts  should  work  harder.  Earnings 
were  not  meeting  expenses.  Because  of  the  commingling,  day  and 
night,  of  the  prisoners,  the  penitentiary  had  few  terrors  for  the 
indigent.  The  prison  was  placed  in  1806  under  the  sole  charge  of 
the  governor  of  the  State,  and  a  new  keeper  appointed.  By  1807, 
great  industrial  activity  was  recorded  and  profits  of  nearly  $8,000. 
The  chief  occupations  were  boots,  shoes,  wrought  and  cut  nails. 
A  sales  ageiit  was  appointed.  For  some  yesirs,  profits  were 
reported.  Within  ten  years,  however,  a  Legislative  committee 
reported  that  penitentiary  institutions,  *  Vhen  conducted  upon  the 
mild  and  merciful  principle  that  led  to  their  establishment''  could 
never  be  depended  upon  as  sources  of  revenue  to  the  State.^  The 
estimated  budget  for  the  fiscal  years,  1818-1819  showed: 

DISBUESEMENTS. 

For  raw  materials $55,000 

Salaries  3,400 

Removing  criminals  to  penitentiary  from  jail,  etc 5,500 

$63,900 
RECEIPTS. 
Sale  of  manufactured  articles •  35,000 

Deficit  $28,900 

27  Jol.  House  of  Delegates,  1835-36,  Document  7. 

28  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1830,  p.  425. 

»  Jbl.  House  of  Delegates,  1826-27,  App.  4. 
80  Jol.  House  of  Delegates,  1818-19,  p.  150. 


216  History  of  American  Prisons 

Clearly,  therefore,  the  profits  announced  by  the  prison  in  succes- 
sive years  were  on  the  operations  of  the  industries,  and  not,  as  in 
Connecticut  for  instance,  upon  a  net  surplus,  after  all  expenses  of 
the  prison  including  salaries  of  officers,  had  been  paid. 

In  1817  the  law  was  amended  to  provide  that  the  Governor  should 
appoint  a  board  of  directors,  and  two  years  later  all  powers  for- 
merly vested  in  the  Governor  were  vested  in  them,  the  Legislature 
however  electing  the  superintendent,  which  often  caused  divided 
authority  between  them. 

The  prison  seems  at  no  time  to  have  been  on  an  absolutely  self- 
supporting  basis.  A  comparative  table  presented  by  Superintend- 
ent Morgan  in  1840  throws  some  light  on  the  penitentiary 
operations: 

1816-1820. 
Cash  paid  into  penitentiary  by  State,  on  manufacturing  account..    $255,405  34 
On  account  of  expenses  to  buildings 11,317  76 

$266,723  10 
Cash  paid  into  State  treasury  by  penitentiary  from  manufacturers      157,189  58 

Deficit,  1816-1820  $109,533  52 

1832-1840. 

Paid  by  State  treasury  for  operation  of  penitentiary     $98,332  00 

Paid  into  State  treasury  by  agents $51,630  00     

Clothing  furnished  lunatic  hospital 20,500  95  72,130  95 


Balance  against  penitentiary  account $26,201  05 

But 

Other  work  done  for  State  by  penitentiary $32,544  25     

Balance  in  favor  of  penitentiary  from  1832-1840 6,343  20 

$32,544  25  $32,544  25 


The  Virginia  Penitentiary  seems  to  have  had  little  influence  upon 
other  States.  Indeed,  it  had  little  to  suggest,  save  that  which  should 
be  avoided.  Its  architecture  was  faulty.  No  other  prison  built 
upon  its  design.  It  was  not  self-supporting.  It  made  no  feature 
of  reformation.  It  could  not  successfully  conduct  a  silent  system, 
because  of  the  construction  of  the  prison.  Its  death  rate  was 
abnormal.  Its  solitary  cells  and  dungeons  were  places  of  horror. 
It  maintained  no  chaplain  nor  Sunday  School.  Its  Sabbath  chapel 
was  at  best  intermittent.  Its  location  was  unsanitary.  In  com- 
parison with  Auburn,  Wethersfield,  or  the  Eastern  Penitentiary, 
it  presented  but  a  sorry  figure  for  the  State  prison  of  the  leading 
State  of  the  South. 


CHAPTER  XIX 


THE  EASTERN  PENITENTIARY  OF  PENNSYLVANIA 

1829-1844 

No  prison  in  the  United  States  has  ever  been  such  a  storm-center 
in  the  discussion  and  development  of  prison  reform  as  the  Eastern 
Penitentiary  of  Pennsylvania,  which  received  its  first  prisoner  on 
October  5th,  1829.  In  a  previous  chapter  *  we  have  described  its 
unique  architectural  feature  —  the  radial  *  *  ranges ' '  of  cells,  rami- 
fying like  seven  spokes  of  a  wheel  from  a  common  center.  We 
have  described  the  clearcut  and  definite  penological  principle  upon 
which  the  prison  was  to  be  administered,  namely,  the  absolute  sepa- 
ration of  all  prisoners  at  all  times  from  each  other,  with  the 
accompanying  separate  industrial  activity  of  each  prisoner  in  his 
own  cell. 

-^,  As  early  as  1837,  the  prison  had  already  become  famous  as  the 
chief  exponent  of  what  was  now  known  as  the  **  Pennsylvania 
plan/^  both  in  the  United  States  and  in  Europe.  The  prison  was 
not  only  visited  by  representatives  of  other  States  planning  to  build 
new  prisons,  but  was  studied  with  especial  care  by  delegations  of 
official  specialists  from  foreign  countries,  as  Gustave  de  Beaumont 
and  Alexis  de  Tocqueville  of  France  (1831),  William  Crawford, 
secretary  of  the  London  Prison  Discipline  Society  (1832),  Doctor 
Julius  of  Prussia  (1835),  Mondelet  and  Neilson  of  lower  Canada 
(1834),  and  De  Metz  and  Blouet  from  France  in  1836-37.  Espe- 
<}ially  from  the  detailed  descriptions  and  thoughtful  criticisms  and 
deductions  of  the  above  can  a  peculiarly  comprehensive  picture  of 
the  Eastern  Penitentiary  be  reconstructed. 

Convicts  customarily  entered  their  cells  upon  commitment  to  the 
Eastern  Penitentiary,  not  to  emerge  therefrom  until  the  day  of 
their  liberation  from  prison,  unless  in  case  of  punishment,  ilhiess 
or  death.®  Exceptions  to  the  rule  were  made  infrequently,  as  in 
<}ases  in  which  the  convict  was  removed  to  work  in  an  adjacent  shop- 
cell,  or  to  exercise  himself  alone  in  a  yard,  or  even  —  as  with 
Superintendent  Wood  in  1834  ^ —  to  wait  on  the  table  in  his  resi- 
dence. Even  under  such  circumstances,  the  inflexible  rule  was 
followed  that  no  association  of  prisoners  or  communication  with 
€ach  other  was  tolerated. 

The  convict  on  his  arrival  at  the  prison  was  visited  by  the  phy- 
sician, who  until  the  year  1842  was  an  attending  physician,  but 
after  that  in  residence.  After  the  medical  inspection  and  a  hot 
bath,  the  prison  uniform  was  given  to  the  new  prisoner,  not  the 

•  Chapter  XI. 
1  McElwell. 

3  Main  features  of  the  following  description  or  routine  from  De  Metz  and  Blouet, 
p.  28. 

[217] 


\/ 


218  History  of  American  Prisons 

striped  or  motley  uniform  of  the  prisons  on  the  Auburn  plan,  but 
clothing  without  humiliating  or  conspicuous  pattern.  Experience 
early  proved  the  danger  of  escape  to  be  almost  negligible,  and  the 
necessity  of  a  striped  uniform  as  a  distinguishing  mark  was  not 
felt. 

With  bandaged  eyes  ^  the  convict  was  led  to  the  central  rotunda 
or  ** observatory,"  where  the  superintendent  spoke  briefly  to  him  of 
the  purposes  of  the  prison,  and  of  its  rules  and  methods.  Thence, 
still  blindfolded,  the  convict  was  led  to  his  cell,  over  the  door  of 
which  was  a  number,  by  which  he  was  henceforth  to  be  known. 
Within  the  cell,  his  eyes  were  unbandaged.  If  he  was  so  fortunate 
as  to  have  a  cell  on  the  ground  floor,  he  could  exercise  at  specified 
periods  in  the  little  adjacent  yard,  corresponding  approximately 
in  size  to  his  cell,  and  entered  by  a  door  from  his  cell.  Never  would 
a  prisoner  from  the  next  cell  to  the  right  or  left  exercise  when  he 
was  in  the  open  air,  for  then  there  might  be  communication. 

During  the  first  few  days  in  his  cell  he  was  left  almost  entirely 
to  himself,  save  when  the  oflScer  brought  him  his  meals.  Without 
work  or  book  he  sat  and  thought,  overwhelmed,  generally  by  the 
horror  of  the  silent,  impassive,  powerful,  monotonous,  relentless 
engine  of  punishment  of  which  he  had  become  a  helpless  part.  The 
solitude  seemed  insufferable.  He  felt  that  he  could  never  endure 
his  sentence ;  that  he  must  certainly  die  before  his  time  of  liberation 
should  come.^ 

After  a  few  days  the  prisoner  was  asked  if  he  desired  some  work, 
an  offer  generally  eagerly  accepted.  If  the  prisoner  had  a  trade, 
he  was  customarily  allowed  to  follow  it  in  prison.  In  retrospect, 
most  prisoners  testified  that  ''they  would  have  died  if  they  had  not 
been  permitted  to  work. ' ' '  Sunday  seemed  interminably  long, 
because  no  work  was  allowed  on  that  day.  Work  thus  became  an 
opportunity  —  a  favor  granted  by  the  prison  to  well-behaved  and 
industrious  inmates,  whereas  in  the  prisons  of  the  Auburn  type 
work  there  was  a  painful,  daily  enforced  task,  to  which  the  prisoner 
had  to  be  driven  on  pain  of  punishment.^ 

The  prisoner  at  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  was,  however,  obliged 
to  choose  between  being  placed  at  work  or  in  a  dark  cell.  There 
was  no  simple  option  of  working  more  or  working  less.  His  choice 
was  seldom  long  in  suspense,  and  he  chose  work.^ 

The  Bible  also  became  a  document  of  interest  to  the  prisoner, 
because  his  possession  of  it  was  a  favor  during  his  good  behavior. 
The  infrequent  visit  of  the  moral  instructor,  or  of  some  visitor  from 
the  outside  world,  might  be  lengthened  or  made  more  frequent  if 
the  prisoner  would  try  to  learn  to  read  from  the  Bible  as  a  text- 
book. Moreover,  any  visit  from  an  officer  came  to  have  an  intense 
meaning  to  the  prisoner.  Such  visits  alone  connected  him  with  the 
world  of  living  beings.     One  prisoner  was  cited  by  the  Prussian 

2  According  to  Julius  the  prisoner  was  not  blindfolded,  but  his  head  was  covered 
with  a  hood.    Julius.     S.  Z.,  p.  190. 

*  de  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  p.  197. 
s  Same,  p.  188. 
«  Same,  p.  24. 
^  Same,  p.  40. 


History  of  American  Prisons  219 

visitor,  Doctor  Julius,  as  saying  that  his  greatest  joy  was  the  visit 
of  a  cricket  or  a  butterfly  because  it  seemed  like  company.^  No 
communication  with  family  or  friends  was  ordinarily  allowed  the 
convict.  Julius  found,  several  years  after  Crawford's  visit,  that, 
very  exceptionally,  the  convict  might  be  allowed  to  write  his  family 
about  himself,  but  that  he  was  never  permitted  to  hear  from  them.^" 

So  absolutely  was  the  news  of  the  outside  world  excluded,  that 
months  after  the  cholera  raged  in  Philadelphia  in  1832,  the  inmates 
were  still  unaware  that  the  epidemic  had  occurred.^  Not  one  case 
of  Asiatic  cholera  appeared  in  the  Penitentiary,  although  the 
disease  swept  away  numbers  in  the  city.  The  sole  visitors  to  the 
prisoner  were  the  inspectors,  the  superintendent,  the  doctor, 
the  moral  instructor,  the  employees  designated  for  that  purpose, 
and  the  official  visitors  —  who  undoubtedly  appeared  seldom  at 
the  prison,  and  were  the  governor  of  the  State,  the  members  of  the 
Legislature  (represented  by  a  committee  who  visited  during  the 
Legislative  session)  the  Secretary  of  State,  the  judges  of  the  Su- 
preme Court,  the  attorney  general  and  his  deputies,  and  the 
mayors  and  recorders  of  Philadelphia,  Lancaster  and  Pittsburg. 
The  active  committee  of  the  Philadelphia  Society  for  Alleviating  the 
Miseries  of  Public  Prisons  visited  frequently,  and  had  the  legal 
power  of  entrance.^^ 

Therefore,  the  prison  was  not  an  institution  where  the  convicts 
were  absolutely  isolated.  Only  from  other  inmates  were  they  relent- 
lessly separated.  Heavy  fines  might  be  imposed  upon  a  visitor 
who  smuggled  in  a  letter  to  an  inmate,  or  acted  as  a  means  of 
communication  between  the  inmates.  No  favors  of  food  were 
granted;  a  prisoner,  unless  ill,  must  subsist  only  from  prison 
rations.    No  tobacco,  wine  or  beer  was  permitted. 

The  prisoner  arose  at  daybreak,  or  in  summer  between  4.30  and  5. 
He  went  to  bed  between  9  and  10  in  the  evening.  In  winter  he 
worked  after  dark  by  lamplight,  if  his  skill  were  sufficient  to  war- 
rant the  prison  the  extra  expenditure  of  light.  The  prisoner 
received  three  meals  a  day,  breakfast  at  7,  dinner  at  12,  and  supper 
at  6.^ 

Combe  gave  in  his  ''Notes  on  the  United  States"  the  diet  of  the 
prisoners.  The  men  received  for  breakfast:  1  pint  of  coffee  or 
cocoa ;  for  dinner  %  lb.  of  boiled  beef  without  bone,  or  %  lb.  pork, 
1  pint  soup  and  ample  potatoes.  For  supper  they  had  mush  ad 
libitum.  They  received  %  gallon  of  molasses  per  month,  salt  when 
asked  for,  and  vinegar  as  a  favor.  Sometimes  they  had  turnips 
and  cabbages  in  the  form  of  ''crout."  They  also  received  1  lb.  of 
bread  per  day,  made  of  wheat  or  rye. 

If  the  prisoner  was  sick,  he  was  removed  to  a  solitary  infirmary 
cell,  where  his  diet  was  scanty,  and  where  there  was  no  greater 
chance  of  communication  with  other  inmates  than  in  his  own  cell. 

8  Crawford,  p.  11, 

» Julius.     "  Sittleche  Zusbaende,"  Vol.  II,  p.  2o2. 

10  Same,  p.  191. 

"De  Metz  and  Blouet,  p.  28. 

"De  Metz  and  Blouet,  p.  24. 


220  History  of  American  Prisons 

If  the  prisoner  became  very  sick,  the  door  of  his  infirmary  cell 
was  left  open,  and  an  attendant  on  watch  passed  from  one  cell  to 
another. 

All  prisoners  were  subjected  to  the  same  regime.  One  day  was 
wholly  like  another.  No  compensation  was,  until  the  year  1841, 
allowed  the  prisoner,  save  approbation  for  good  conduct  or  good 
work.  After  1840,  over-stint  was  allowed.  As  soon  as  the  prisoner 
became  proficient,  a  moderate  task,  estimated  at  the  actual  cost  of 
his  maintenance  was  required  of  him.  The  balance  of  his  labor  was 
credited  to  him,  the  amount  being  paid  on  his  release  from  prison. 
In  1841,  $884.22  was  thus  expended  for  31  prisoners  on  discharge, 
an  average  of  $28.52.    In  1842,  the  over-stint  amounted  to  $955.54. 

The  inspectors  of  the  prison  were  appointed  for  two  years  by 

Supreme  Court  judges ;  they  elected  their  own  president,  secretary 

y  and  treasurer.     They  must  be  property  holders,  and  live  in  the 

county  of  Philadelphia.     They  received  no  salary,  but  were  free 

of  military  and  jury  duty  and  poor  duty.^* 

The  stimulus  to  good  behavior  and  industry  was  during  the  first 
eleven  years  (1829-1840)  based  on  the  fear  of  deprivation  of  the 
privileges  of  labor,  on  moral  literature,  and  on  fear  of  positive 
punishments,  ranging  from  reduction  in  diet  to  the  extremes  of 
the  straight  jacket,  the  shower-bath  and  the  gag.  The  general 
behavior  of  the  convicts  was  undoubtedly  very  satisfactory.  The 
majority  of  the  inmates  seemed  ''resigned,  if  not  happy"  after 
the  first  horror  of  separate  confinement  had  diminished  or  de- 
parted.^2  The  philosophy  of  the  board  of  inspectors  and  of  the 
superintendent  was,  a  year  from  the  opening  of  the  prison,  as 
follows :  ^^ 

''The  character  of  the  convict  is  generally  social,  to  a  fault.  The  vices  of 
social  life  have  heralded  the  ruin  of  his  fortune  and  his  hopes,  and,  when 
deprived  of  the  society  of  his  companions  in  vicious  indulgences  and  guilt, 
he  reads  and  listens  with  eagerness,  because  he  is  relieved  by  the  variety 
from  the  weariness  of  his  solitude.  There  he  can  only  read  and  hear  what  is 
calculated  to  make  him  industrious  and  virtuous. 

"Personal  vanity,  which  often  leads  the  prisoner  to  value  himself  upon 
being  regarded  by  his  neighbors  as  a  'staunch  man,'  there  deserts  him,  for 
there  is  no  one  to  applaud,  admire  or  see  him.  In  the  presence  of  those  who 
are  allowed  to  visit  him,  no  vanity  that  is  not  praiseworthy  can  be  indulged. 
Hence,  this  mode  of  punishment,  bearing  as  it  does  with  great  severity  upon 
the  hardened  and  impenitent  felon,  is  eminently  calculated  to  break  down  hijr 
obdurate  spirit. 

' '  And  when  the  prisoner  has  once  experienced  the  operation  of  the  principles 
of  this  institution  on  a  broken  spirit  and  a  contrite  heart,  he  learns,  and  he 
feels,  that  moral  and  religious  reflection,  relieved  by  industrious  occupation 
at  his  trade,  comfort  and  support  his  mental  and  physical  powers,  divest  his 
solitary  cell  of  all  its  horrors,  and  his  punishment  of  much  of  its  severity. 

In  1831,  during  a  period  of  three  months,  only  two  instances, 
were  recorded  for  which  even  a  meal  had  been  forfeited  for  bad 
conduct.^^     In  1834,  the  inspectors  declared  that  the  penitentiary- 

12  Board  of  Inspectors,  1830,  p.  17. 
1*  Same. 

IS  Board  of  Inspectors,  1830,  p.  10. 
"  Board  of  Inspectors,  1831,  p.  9. 


History  of  American  Prisons  221 

system  was  emphatically  a  mild  and  humane  discipline."  It  was  a 
system  of  privations  rather  than  of  punishments.^^  De  Beaumont 
and  de  Tocqueville  stated  in  1832  that  there  was  in  the  Eastern 
Penitentiary  no  punishment,  because  there  was  no  infraction  of  the 
rules.^^  The  French  investigators  found  that  in  Auburn  the  pris- 
oners were  treated  much  more  severely,  but  that  at  Philadelphia 
they  were  much  more  unhappy.^®  William  Crawford,  the  English 
specialist,  bore  similar  testimony  in  1834  to  the  mildness  of  the 
disciplined^  In  1835,  there  occurred,  however,  a  serious  Legislative 
investigation  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary.  Sweeping  charges  of 
cruelty  and  immoralitj^  on  the  part  of  the  superintendent  and  lesser  / 
officials  were  made  by  the  attorney  general  of  the  State.  An  investi- 
gation,  extending  over  several  months,  was  held  by  a  Legislative 
committee,  resulting  in  the  spring  of  1835  in  a  majority  report  and 
a   ainority  report.^^ 

The  following  findings  were  common  to  both  reports: 

No  charge  of  immorality  on  the  part  of  the  superintendent  was  proved. 

Physical  punishments  of  a  severe  nature  were  at  times  employed.  Buckets 
of  cold  water  had  been  thrown  in  the  winter  time  upon  an  inmate  with 
filthy  habits.  This  inmate  was  probably  insane.  The  gag  had  been  used 
upon  a  prisoner  —  also  probably  insane  —  and  the  said  prisoner  had  sud- 
denly died  under  the  process.  The  straight  jacket  was  used  at  times  with 
refractory  prisoners.  . 

Convicts  were  not  infrequently  employed  outside  their  cells,  on  operations  s/ 
such  as  cooking,  breaking  coal,  making  fires,  and  occasionally  as  waiters,  and 
in  work  connected  with  building  and  construction  of  cells.     These  convicts 
did  not  work  in  association. 

The  main  issue  between  the  majority  and  minority  reports  of  the 
committee  was  as  to  the  degree  of  severity  of  the  punishments 
employed.  The  majority  report  was  extenuating  and  apologetic,  y 
finding  the  harsh  physical  punishments,  as  employed  at  the  prison, 
duplicated  in  insane  asylums  and  in  the  United  States  Navy.  The 
minority  report  expressed  horror  at  the  frequency  of  the  extreme 
punishments.  The  minority  report  regarded  the  majority  report 
as  a  whitewash. 

The  investigation  demonstrated  that  the  Eastern  Penitentiary 
administered  a  graded  system  of  punishments.^*  The  first  and 
mildest  punishment  was  a  deprivation  of  the  use  of  the  exercise 
yard  by  the  convict  for  a  given  period.  The  second  stage  of  punish- 
ment included  the  forfeiture  of  a  dinner  for  a  period  of  from  two 
to  three  weeks  —  in  other  words,  a  serious  reduction  in  rations. 
For  severer  cases,  the  dark  cell  was  employed ;  this  being  an  ordi- 
nary cell  from  which  light  was  totally  excluded.  Often  even  the 
single  blanket  was  denied  the  prisoner.  Every  twenty-four  hours 
the  convict  received  eight  ounces  of  bread  and  some  water.^*    His 

"  Board  of  Inspectors,  1834,  p.  4. 

"  Board  of  Inspectors,  1834,  p.  9. 

1*  de  Beaumont  and   de  Tocqueville,   p.   40. 

^  de  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  p.  46. 

21  Crawford,  p 

22  Report  of  Joint  Committee  of  Legislation  in  relation  to  Eastern  Penitentiary 
of  Pennsylvania,  1835. 

23  McElvi^ell,  p.  15ff  for  description  of  punishments  here  summarized. 

2*  According  to  Julius  (S.  Z.,  p.  192),  one  and  one-half  pounds  bread  and  one 
pint  of  water  every  twenty-four  hours. 


222  History  of  American  Prisons 

sufferings  were  intense,  especially  in  cold  weather.  One  convict 
had  been  held  in  the  dark  cell  for  forty-two  days,  and  was  suffering 
from  starvation  and  delirium  when  taken  out. 

The  next  degree  of  punishment  in  an  ascending  scale  was  the 
absolute  deprivation  of  food,  for  a  period  of  not  over  three  days. 
A  further  stage  was  reached  with  the  infliction  of  ''ducking,"  in 
which  process  the  convict  was  suspended  from  the  yard  wall  by  the 
wrists,  and  drenched  with  buckets  of  cold  water,  the  degree  of 
severity  of  which  depended  upon  the  state  of  the  atmosphere. 

The  *'mad  or  tranquilizing  chair"  was  another  instrument  of 
corporal  punishment.  It  was  a  large  box-chair  made  of  planks. 
The  convict  was  strapped  in  the  chair  and  his  hands  were  hand- 
cuffed. For  the  feet  there  was  no  resting  place.  It  was  not  possible 
to  move  body  or  limbs,  and  the  consequent  pain  was  intense.  Arms 
and  legs  swelled  frightfully.  Even  while  in  this  position  prisoners 
had  been  beaten. 

The  ''straight- jacket,"  another  punishment,  was  a  sack  or  bag- 
ging cloth  of  three  thicknesses,  with  pocketholes  in  the  front  for  the 
admission  of  the  hands.  In  the  back  there  were  rows  of  eyelets, 
whereby  the  jacket  might  be  laced  up.  The  jacket  was  forced  over 
the  head  of  the  convict,  and  his  hands  were  inserted  in  the  pockets ; 
a  collar  was  fitted  about  the  neck,  but  the  head  was  left  free.  The 
jacket  was  kept  upon  the  prisoner  for  from  four  to  nine  hours. 
Convicts  in  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  had  been  so  tightly  laced  into 
the  jacket  that  their  necks  and  faces  were  black  with  congealed 
blood.  The  torture  could  be  made  excruciating.  One  convict  was 
reported  to  have  lost  the  use  of  his  hand.  Men  of  the  stoutest  nerve 
would  shriek  as  if  on  the  rack. 

The  ' '  gag '  ^  was  the  severest  and  most  complicated  of  the  punish- 
ments. It  was  under  this  treatment  that  an  insane  convict  died, 
thus  precipitating  the  investigation.  The  gag  resembled  the  stiff 
bit  of  a  bridle,  having  an  iron  ' '  palet ' '  or  mouthpiece  in  the  center, 
and  chains  at  each  end.  It  was  placed  in  the  mouth  of  the  sufferer, 
and  drawn  tightly  toward  the  jaws,  the  chains  being  fastened  in  a 
lock.  The  prisoner's  hands  were  placed  in  leather  gloves  which 
had  iron  staples  in  them,  through  which  staples  leather  straps  were 
introduced,  and  his  arms  were  crossed  behind  his  back.  Other 
straps  were  passed  around  his  hands,  and  then  passed  between  the 
chains  of  the  gag  and  the  back  of  his  neck.  Now  his  hands  were 
forcibly  drawn  up  to  his  shoulders,  and  his  head  drawn  back,  this 
tightening  the  gag  in  the  mouth,  and  rendering  the  agony  intoler- 
able. The  bits  and  chains,  passing  with  force  against  the  veins  and 
arteries,  necessarily  produced  a  suffusion  of  blood  to  the  head,  and 
the  sufferer,  if  not  speedily  relieved,  was  in  great  danger  of  death. 

After  the  investigation,  the  severer  physical  punishments  were 
apparently  abandoned.  The  majority  report  had  found  the  duck- 
ing process  ' '  indiscreet, ' '  but  discovered  no  evidences  of  intentional 
cruelty.  The  committee  stated  that  the  cold  shower-bath  was  fre- 
quently employed  in  the  best  establishments  for  the  insane  as  a 


History  of  American  Prisons  223 

disciplinary  and  curative  measure.  The  thirteen  buckets  of  cold 
water  with  which  the  convict  in  question  was  drenched  had 
succeeded  in  breaking  him  of  his  filthy  habits. 

Nor  was  the  use  of  the  gag  unusual,  the  navy  being  cited.  It 
was  frequently  used  in  the  Eastern  Penitentiary,  and  the  committee 
regarded  it  therefore  as  not  unusual.  It  had  not  been  considered 
by  the  attending  physician,  Doctor  Bache,  as  cruel,  and  therefore 
the  gag  was  held  to  be  neither  cruel  nor  unusual.  The  gag  was 
not  naturally  calculated  to  produce  death,  and  therefore  the  rela- 
tion of  the  punishment  of  the  convict  in  question  and  his  death  was 
not  that  of  cause  and  effect.  By  such  reasoning  did  the  committee 
exculpate  the  administration. 

Nevertheless,  the  disciplinary  methods  of  the  Eastern  Peniten- 
tiary should  not  be  judged  by  present  standards  of  estimating 
punishments.  The  age  in  which  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  was 
founded  was  one  of  standarized  cruelty  in  discipline.  Both  the 
British  and  American  navies  were  rigorous  in  corporal  punishment. 
If  free  seamen  were  thus  flogged  and  otherwise  punished,  should 
convicted  malefactors  and  most  desperate  criminals  be  let  off  more 
easily  ?  The  dark  cell  seemed  a  mild  and  humanitarian  substitute 
for  corporal  punishment.  Indeed,  the  Boston  Prison  Discipline 
Society  in  the  first  ten  or  fifteen  years  of  its  existence  took  no 
clear-cut  stand  against  the  floggings  and  other  harsh  disciplinary 
measures  of  the  Auburn  system.  Even  Dorothea  Dix  was  reluct-  y" 
antly  obliged  to  concede  the  necessity  of  flogging  the  most  refractory  ^ 
prisoners. 

The  list  of  corporal  punishments,  outlined  above,  is  for  the 
sensitive  student  of  to-day  most  painful  reading.  And  it  is  not 
pleasant  to  realize  that  only  within  the  last  few  years,  even  in  the 
State  of  New  York,  has  the  severer  punishment  of  the  dark  cell  and 
the  ''cooler,"  a  synonym  for  the  dark  cell,  been  abandoned  in  the 
prisons.  Less  than  ten  years  ago  the  writer  saw  men  on  the  verge 
of  collapse  in  the  dark  cells  in  the  Penitentiary  of  the  City  of 
New  York.  Mr.  Osborne  undergoing  a  week's  imprisonment  in 
1913,  in  Auburn  Prison,  in  order  to  acquaint  himself  with  the 
routine  life  of  the  inmates  in  that  year,  was  put  into  the  * '  dungeon ' ' 
and  subjected  to  cruelties  of  treatment  that  horrified  the  State  when 
published.  It  is  still  more  or  less  customary  in  some  prisons  to 
stand  recalcitrant  prisoners  up  in  a  cage  so  constructed  that  they 
cannot  sit  down.  Corporal  punishment,  floggings,  chaining  pris- 
oners to  the  wall,  stringing  up  so  that  the  toes  barely  touch  the 
floor,  and  similar  semi-tortures,  are  still  from  time  to  time 
announced  in  investigations,  and  in  the  statements  of  inmates  or 
discharged  prisoners. 

The  fact  is,  in  many  cases,  that  the  will  to  administer  a  prison 
on  humanitarian  lines,  and  the  intention  to  inflict  severe  discipline 
upon  those  inmates  who  will  not  conform  to  such  humane  adminis- 
tration, goes  hand  in  hand.  Repeatedly,  wardens  were  found,  in 
the  prisons  of  a  decade  ago,  who  were  men  of  standing  in  the 
community,  men  of  ideals,  and  yet  who  practiced  severe  punish- 


V 


/ 


224  History  of  American  Prisons 

ments  as  a  part  of  the  necessary  conduct  of  a  prison.  It  was  not 
paradoxical  so  much  as  it  was  traditional.  The  customs  had  been 
handed  down,  and  had  the  sanction  of  long  usage,  and  frequently 
of  law.  The  warden,  generally  politically  appointed,  and  aware 
that  his  term  was  bounded  partly  by  the  fate  of  his  political  party, 
was  not  inclined  to  be  rebellious  against  tradition,  but  on  the  other 
hand  was  inclined  to  continue  the  practices  which,  however  abhor- 
rent to  him  at  first,  were  regarded  by  the  officials  of  the  prison  as 
necessary  and  as  a  part  of  the  customs  of  the  prison  that  the 
warden  must  ' '  stand  for. ' ' 

It  was  the  gradual  introduction  of  the  honor  system,  which  indi- 
vidualized the  treatment  of  prisoners  as  no  previous  methods  had, 
that  by  its  very  nature  reduced  the  use  of  physical  and  severe 
punishments,  because  it  forcibly  impressed  upon  warden  and  offi- 
cials alike  the  fact  of  the  humanness  of  the  inmate,  and  his 
potential  capacities  to  be  like  other  men.  It  is  relatively  easy  to 
punish  persons  out  of  a  mass,  but  hard  to  punish  the  individual 
when  he  stands  clearly  by  himself.  While  to  know  all,  in  prison, 
has  not  been  to  pardon  all,  in  accordance  with  the  French  adage, 
it  is  a  fact  that  to  know  much  more  of  the  prisoner  has  resulted 
in  the  recognition  that  punishment  is  one  of  the  most  futile  methods 
of  achieving  permanent  change,  as  compared  with  the  systematic 
and  intelligent  use  of  privileges  and  deprivations,  and  the  stimulus 
of  personal  ambition  and  the  desire  for  proper  gain. 

Therefore  we  find  at  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  a  generally  mild 
and  benevolent  administration,  coupled  with  the  occasional  use  of 
literally  horrible  tortures.  Samuel  L.  Wood,  the  warden,  was  a 
Quaker  of  high  standing.  Indeed,  the  Legislative  committee  found 
Wood  even  too  liberal  in  his  relaxation  of  the  prison  rules,  in  the 
cases  of  convicts  who  seemed  to  need  exercise  or  outdoor  employ- 
ment, and  when  constant  cell  confinement  appeared  too  arduous. 
The  committee  held  that  any  association  of  a  convict  even  with 
someone  not  a  convict  while  at  work  —  as  with  a  civilian  black- 
smith—  was  contrary  to  the  law  requiring  constant  separate 
confinement.^^ 

The  administration  weathered  thus  the  stormy  year  of  1835. 
From  this  year  until  1840,  when  Mr.  Wood  resigned,  the  discipline 
seems  to  have  gone  forward  without  serious  friction.  Harriet 
Martineau,  an  English  woman,  wrote  in  her  ' '  Society  in  America, ' ' 
published  in  1837  in  New  York,  that  she  had,  in  her  visits  to  the 
cells  at  the  Eastern  Penitentiary,  been  favored  with  the  confidence 
of  a  great  number  of  the  prisoners,  every  one  of  whom  told  her 
(not  being  aware  of  the  existence  of  the  other  prisoners)  that  he 
was  under  obligation  to  those  who  had  charge  of  him  for  treating 
him  with  respect. 

In  1838  a  moral  instructor  was  appointed.  The  original  law  of 
1829  had  provided  for  an  unsalaried  chaplain,  which  office  the 
administration  found  it  impossible  to  fill  because  of  the  entire  lack 
of  provision  for  a  salary.    Despite  the  frequent  and  devoted  visits 

25  Report  of  Joint  Committtee,  1835,  p.  22. 


History  of  American  Prisons  225 

of  several  clergymen,  the  need  of  systematic  moral  and  religious 
training  of  the  convicts  was  repeatedly  urged  by  the  prison  board 
and  the  warden.  The  Legislature  was  obdurate  for  nearly  ten 
years.  George  Combe,  the  noted  Scotch  phrenologist,  visited  this 
prison  in  January,  1839.    He  wrote: 

"No  single  circumstance  in  the  history  of  Pennsylvania  indicates  the  low 
state  of  general  information  among  the  people  more  strongly  than  the  ex- 
traordinary fact  that  after  erecting  this  penitentiary  at  great  expense,  the 
Legislature  continues  insensible  to  every  entreaty  of  its  legal  guardians  to  be 
furnished  with  adequate  means  of  moral  and  religious  instruction  of  the 
prisoners. ' ' 

When  finally  the  salaried  office  of  ' '  moral  instructor ' '  was  created 

—  and  tilled  by  a  former  Baptist  minister  —  many  petitions  of 
citizens  urged  the  Legislature  to  discontinue  the  office  for  fear  of 
proselyting.  The  excellent  moral  results  upon  the  prisoners, 
keenly  desirous  of  human  company,  caused  the  Legislature  of  1839 
not  to  yield  to  the  importunate  citizens. 

A  striking  testimony  to  the  good  order  and  the  quiet  atmosphere 
of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  came  from  an  unexpected  source  in 
1843,  when  two  members  of  the  board  of  managers  of  Sing  Sing 
Prison,   who   had   officially  visited  the   Philadelphia   institution, 

reported  that  ^® 

"they  were  forcibly  struck  with  the  contrast  and  order  that  prevailed  at  the 
Eastern  Penitentiary,  and  the  confusion  and  discord  that  reign  here  (at  Sing 
Sing).  There,  at  the  Eastern  Penitentiary,  are  seen  none  of  the  evils  which 
were  witnessed  at  our  prison.  There  was  abundant  opportunity  for  thought 
and  reflection.  No  scenes  of  riot  diverted  the  convicts'  minds  from  the 
thought  of  the  crimes  they  had  committed,  or  the  ruin  they  had  brought  on 
themselves. 

**The  humble  and  the  penitent  incurred  no  hazard  of  being  compelled  to 
transgress  even  in  the  place  of  their  punishment.  The  last  moments  of  the 
dying  man  were  not  disturbed  by  ribald  songs  or  abominable  blasphemy.  The 
vicious  held  no  supremacy  there.  .No  assaults  upon  the  officers,  no  battles 
among  the  wretched  inmates,  were  permitted  to  break  the  quiet  of  that  prison 
house.  No  opportunities  were  afforded  to  the  veteran  criminal  of  extending 
the  corruption  of  service  among  the  weak  and  the  timid. 

*'No  inducements  were  held  out  to  the  hardened  to  defy  all  control  and  set 
an  example  of  disorder  and  disobedience.     Heaven's  first  law  —  that  of  order 

—  reigned  therej  and  while  in  the  solitary  system  was  seen  the  hazard  of 
stultifying  the  mind,  that  evil  could  hardly  be  deemed  greater  than  the  cer- 
tainty, in  our  prison,  of  corrupting  the  heart  and  destroying  the  moral  sense. ' ' 

Striking  testimony  of  a  similar  character  was  given  by  Captain 
Maryatt,  quoting  a  prisoner  at  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  who  had 
served  a  term  at  Sing  Sing :  ^^ 

**In  Sing  Sing  the  punishment  is  corporal  —  here  it  Is  more  mental.  In 
Sing  Sing  there  was  little  chance  of  a  person's  reformation,  as  the  treatment 
was  harsh  and  brutal,  and  the  feelings  of  the  prisoners  were  those  of  in- 
dignation and  resentment.  Their  whole  time  was  occupied  in  trying  how 
they  could  deceive  their  keepers,  and  communicate  with  each  other  by  variety 
of  stratagem.  Here  a  man  was  left  to  his  own  reflection,  and  at  the  same 
time  he  was  treated  like  a  man.  Here  he  was  his  own  tormentor;  when  there,  J 
he  was  quite  as  much  wronged  himself.  ...  At  Sing  Sing  there  was^ 
great  injustice  and  no  redress.  The  infirm  man  was  put  to  equal  labor  with 
the  robust,  and  punished  if  he  did  not  perform  as  much.  The  flogging  was 
very  severe  at  Sing  Sing." 

2«  Annual  Report  of  Inspectors  of  Mount  Pleasant  Prison 
27  Diary  in  America,  Vol,  II,  pp.  264-269. 


226  History  of  American  Prisons 

In  1844,  the  cultural  work  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  was 
extended  by  the  addition  of  a  school  teacher,  and  ample  time  was 
given  to  moral  and  secular  instruction.^^  A  library  of  useful  books 
was  established.  Six  gardens  were  being  constructed,  thus  furnish- 
ing employment  for  twelve  invalids,  half  a  day  each.  Between  400 
and  500  bushels  of  tomatoes,  for  prison  fare  use,  were  one  of  the 
products.  Vegetables  as  well  as  flowers  were  also  reared  by  many 
of  the  convicts  in  their  own  airing  yards,  and  were  thus  "made  the 
instruments  of  productive  and  very  interesting  amusements. ' '  -^ 
Lights  were  allowed  in  the  cells  of  inmates  until  nine  o'clock  in 
most  cases.  An  innovation  was  introduced  in  the  form  of  congre- 
gational singing  by  the  convicts  in  their  own  cells,  as  an  uplifting 
feature,  but  it  is  recorded  that  officers  "in  socks"  spied  in  the 
corridors  to  observe  and  prevent  any  communication  between  con- 
victs under  cover  of  the  sound.^° 

Richard  Vaux,  who  was  the  president  of  the  board  of  inspectors 
of  the  Penitentiary,  wrote  that  the  period  from  1829  to  1849 
was  one  of  experiment  and  experience.'^^  The  period  that  we 
are  now  considering  is  almost  coincident  with  that  of  Vaux. 
Let  us  seek  to  analyze  the  results  of  the  first  fifteen  years,  dur- 
ing which  period  the  principles  and  methods  of  this  world- 
famous  prison  had  become  substantially  fixed.  Nowhere  else  in 
/the  country  were  the  friends  of  prison  reform  so  philosophically 
^  inclined,  or  in  the  aggregate  so  humanely  disposed.  The  Philadel- 
phia Society  for  Alleviating  the  Miseries  of  Public  Prisons  was 
already  an  old  and  established  society,  with  power  to  enter  for 
benevolent  purposes  the  prisons  of  the  State.  Its  membership 
was  undoubtedly  largely  from  the  Society  of  Friends.  The  board 
of  inspectors  was  composed  mainly  of  Quakers.  The  superintend- 
ent was  a  Quaker.  Quaker  influence  was  strong  in  the  State 
Legislature.  The  field  represented  by  the  Eastern  Penitentiary 
was,  in  short,  broadly  open  for  the  development,  under  the  most 
favorable  auspices,  of  a  wise  and  philosophically  grounded  prison 
system.  The  Quakers  had  championed  the  Pennsylvania  system, 
and  did  not  hesitate  to  defend  it. 

The  establishment  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  was  followed  by 
a  curious,  and  in  many  respects  a  most  unfortunate,  development 
in  American  prison  theory  and  methods.  As  we  have  seen  in 
previous  chapters  of  this  study,  two  prison  systems,  the  Auburn 
and  the  Pennsylvania  systems,  took  shape,  and  became  bitter  rivals. 
Each  system  adhered  to  a  certain  basic  principle,  namely,  that 
prisoners  should  be  kept  from  all  communication  with  each  other, 
but  the  systems  differed,  in  that  Auburn  used  silence  as  the  medium 
of  separation,  and  Philadelphia  used  the  actual  physical  separation 
of  inmates  at  all  times.  This  fundamental  difference  of  method, 
and  other  differences  less  material,  might  have  been  made  the  sub- 
ject of  friendly  and  constructive  discussion,  and  perhaps  of  ultimate 

28  Report  of  Inspectors,  1844,  p.  15. 
2»  Report  of  Inspectors,  1844,  p.  36.- 
^  Report  of  Inspectors,  1844,  p.  23. 
31  Report  of  Inspectors,   1844,   p.   85. 


History  of  American  Prisons  227 

readjustment  and  compromise  into  a  third  system,  had  there  not 
been  injected  into  the  situation,  in  1826,  by  the  establishment  of 
the  Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society,  an  element  of  militant  and 
contentious  advocacy  of  the  Auburn  system  at  all  costs  that  grew,  / 
with  the  founding  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary,  into  a  violent  and 
acrimonious  campaign  against  the  Pennsylvania  system,  even  before 
it  had  had  a  fair  chance  to  get  started. 

Both  Philadelphia  and  Boston  had  now  societies  for  prison 
reform,  but  with  a  basic  difference  in  constitution.  The  Philadel- 
phia society  was  a  mutual  organization,  in  which  there  seemed  to  be 
a  general  high  level  of  interest  and  intelligence.  The  Boston  society 
was  practically  one  man,  the  Reverend  Louis  Dwight,  who  was 
indefatigable,  and  pursued  both  prison  reform  and  the  Philadelphia 
group  with  almost  equal  persistence.  The  Philadelphia  society 
was  pacifistic  and  didn  't  like  a  fight.  Dwight  was  a  born  mission- 
ary, with  the  militant  spirit  strongly  developed  in  what  he  believed 
to  be  a  righteous  cause.  The  Philadelphia  society  published  no 
journal  of  information  or  propaganda,  relying  upon  the  annual 
reports  of  the  inspectors  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  to  interpret 
that  system.  The  Boston  Society's  annual  reports  gave  fine  chance 
for  pamphleteering,  and  Dwight  was  a  zealous,  untiring,  an  unre- 
served adherent  of  the  system  he  had  espoused,  almost  with 
deliberate  blindness,  seeing  for  many  years  no  faults  in  a  faulty 
system.  The  Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society's  annual  reports 
were  the  only  documents  of  the  period  in  which  the  progress,  . 
methods  and  statistics  of  American  prisons  were  compiled.  Natur- 
ally, Dwight 's  personal  slant  on  the  American  prison  methods 
colored  the  choice  and  the  display  of  the  yearly  descriptions  of 
American  penal  institutions,  and  of  the  development  of  American 
methods. 

Consequently,  these  annual  publications,  coming  out  of  Boston, 
became  for  practically  all  save  the  adherents  of  the  Pennsylvania 
system  authoritative  in  a  period  when  prisons  were  a  relatively 
new  and  serious  problem  in  all  American  States.  Legislatures 
purchased  copies  of  Dwight 's  reports  by  the  hundreds,  and  cir- 
culated them  as  penal  truth.  The  annual  reports  were  otherwise 
distributed  far  and  wide.  Dwight  became  the  high  national  expert 
on  prisons.  His  society  —  which  meant  him  himself  —  furnished 
documents  wherever  new  prisons  were  being  planned.  There  was 
no  such  counter-diligence  coming  out  of  Philadelphia.  Dwight 
traveled  extensively.  He  advised,  and  appeared  before,  Legisla- 
tures and  committees,  and  wherever  he  went  he  was  a  bitter  and 
outspoken  opponent  of  the  Pennsylvania  system.  It  is  probably 
not  too  much  to  say  that  this  one  man  in  large  measure  conditioned 
the  form  of  prison  structure  and  method  adopted  in  many  an 
American  State,  and  consequently  lasting  down  almost  to  the 
present  day. 

Dwight 's  platform  on  prison  management  was  simple.  Auburn, 
in  the  first  place,  was  a  model  for  the  world.  A  prison  should 
be  economically  built,  and  economically  administered.     A  prison 


228  History  of  American  Prisons 

should  support  itself  from  the  labor  of  the  convicts.  Prisons 
should  have  a  low  death  rate.  Prisons  should  render  impossible 
the  communication  of  prisoners  with  each  other. 

The  opening  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  challenged  not  only 
D wight's  sober  judgment,  but  aroused  in  him  nothing  less  than 
what  the  psychologists  to-day  would  call  an  emotional  complex. 
They  were  doing  in  Philadelphia  just  what  he  had  staked  his  repu- 
tation on  denying  as  a  policy.  The  Eastern  Penitentiary  had 
proved  by  far  the  costliest  of  all  the  American  prisons  to  build.  It 
would,  in  his  opinion,  be  equally  expensive  to  administer.  By  the 
constant  isolation  of  the  convicts,  it  had  raised  a  system  that  denied 
the  supremacy  of  the  Auburn  methods.  Its  architectural  layout 
was  wholly  different  from  that  of  Auburn.  It  was  heretical !  And 
so,  as  the  years  came  and  went,  Dwight  inserted  into  the  reports  of 
the  Boston  Society  conclusions  that  were  little  short  of  deliberately 
misleading  regarding  the  institution  in  Philadelphia. 

Meanwhile,  a  considerable  amount  of  literature  was  growing  up 
relative  to  principles  and  methods  in  sound  prison  discipline.  Eng- 
land, France,  Germany,  Sweden,  Holland,  Switzerland  and  Italy 
were  seeking  light.  The  conditions  of  promiscuous  association  of 
prisoners  were  similar  in  Europe  to  those  in  the  American  prisons, 
that  the  Auburn  and  the  Pennsylvania  systems  aimed  to  abolish. 
There  existed  on  the  one  hand  a  continuing  correspondence  between 
English  prison  reformers  and  representative  Americans  with  simi- 
lar interests,  particularly  in  Philadelphia.  The  London  Society 
of  Prison  Discipline  published  an  annual  report  that  was  somewhat 
circulated  in  America,  and  carried  occasional  references  to  Ameri- 
can prisons.  The  early  successes  of  Walnut  Street,  from  1790  to 
1800,  had  been  enthusiastically  heralded  in  Europe  by  the  Due  de 
La  Rochefoucauld-Liancourt.  In  England,  the  London  Society,  in 
France  the  thinkers  on  prison  administration  like  Charles  Lucas 
and  Moreau-Christophe,  in  Belgium  Ducpetiaux,  and  in  Prussia 
Doctor  Julius,  were  propagandists  for  some  fundamental  prison 
reforms.  They  were  all  searching  for  the  latest  and  best,  and  so 
when  Auburn  and  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  were  established  and 
heralded  as  successful  innovations  in  this  complicated  field,  they 
straightway  planned  to  visit  American  prisons  either  personally 
or  through  representatives. 

They  came  to  this  country  in  the  thirties  and  they  found  the  two 
rival  systems  operating,  one,  the  Auburn,  indigenous,  invented  by 
Captain  Brittin,  or  Captain  Lynds,  or  Mr.  Cray,  all  of  Auburn, 
and  on  the  other  hand  the  Pennsylvania  system,  a  product  of  the 
Philadelphians,  but  with  the  architectural  plans  of  Haviland,  an 
English  architect,  and  copied  from  earlier  English  prisons. 

On  the  return  of  the  several  representatives  to  their  own  coun- 

ytries,  they  published  comprehensive  accounts  of  their  American 

^studies.     During  the  twenty  years  from  1840  to   1860  it  might 

almost  be  said  that  the  question  of  the  relative  merits  of  the 

Auburn  and  the   Pennsylvania  systems  was  transferred,   in  the 

matter  of  discussion  and  heated  argument  to  Europe.^     A  new 

82  Foulke.      Remarks    on    Cellular    Separation,    p.    2. 


History  of  American  Prisons  229 

literature  seemed  to  be  forming.  Many  European  authors  wrote 
^xhaustively  on  the  subject  who  had  never  visited  this  country, 
and  who  had  never  seen  the  prisons  they  so  warmly  described  and 
discussed.  Finally,  in  1846,  a  first  international  prison  congress 
convened  at  Frankfort  on  the  Main,  at  the  invitation  of  German 
specialists  in  prison  discipline.  The  entire  session  of  several  days 
was  devoted  to  the  discussion  of  the  invariable  question,  the  relative 
merits  of  the  two  American  systems.  This  problem  was  regarded 
as  fundamental,  and  something  that  must  be  settled  for  Europe, 
because  almost  all  Europe  was  building  prisons.  It  is  amusing,  in  . 
a  way,  to  think  that  while  it  was  impossible  to  gather  in  this^^ 
country  a  group  of  people  to  determine  the  relative  merits  of  the 
two  systems  in  open  discussion  and  with  scientific  mind,  Europe 
became  the  verbal  battleground  for  the  settlement  of  our  own 
problems,  so  far  as  a  settlement  was  possible. 

The  two  systems  were  analyzed  acutely  at  this  conference,  as 
they  had  never  been  analyzed  at  home.  Dwight  of  Boston  was  the 
only  American  present,  but  beyond  briefly  stating  at  one  session 
the  chief  activities  of  the  Boston  Society,  he  took  no  further  part 
in  the  discussions,  which  were  conducted  in  German,  French  and 
English. 

But  we  are  getting  ahead  of  our  study,  chronologically.  In  1832, 
Gustave  de  Beaumont  and  Alexis  de  Tocqueville  published  in  Paris 
their  famous  treatise  ''On  the  Penitentiary  System  in  the  United 
States,"  which  was  translated  into  English  by  Francis  Lieber  in 
1833  and  published  in  Philadelphia.  This  work,  crowned  by  the  > 
French  Academy,  was  the  first  of  a  number  of  careful  and  scholarly 
studies  of  American  prisons  published  by  foreign  students  during 
the  period  of  1830-1840,  after  personal  investigation  of  our  prisons. 

De  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville  visiting  the  United  States  in 
1831,  found  that  solitude,  applied  to  the  criminal  in  order  to 
conduct  him  to  reformation  by  reflection,  rested  upon  a  philoso- 
phical and  true  conception.^*  Pennsylvania  had  adopted  a  system 
which  at  the  same  time  agreed  with  the  austerity  of  her  manners, 
and  her  philanthropic  sensibility.  The  penitentiary  at  Cherry  Hill 
(the  Eastern  Penitentiary)  was  a  combination  of  the  principle  first 
tried  at  the  Western  Penitentiary  in  Pittsburg  (solitude  without 
labor)  and  that  of  Auburn  (association  in  silence  during  the  day).®* 
The  Frenchmen  found,  as  a  basis  for  the  Pennsylvania  system,  / 
that  while  there  were  similar  punishments  and  crimes  called  by 
the  same  name,  there  were  no  two  beings  equal  in  regard  to  their 
morals;  and  every  time  that  convicts  were  put  together,  there 
existed  necessarily  a  fatal  influence  of  some  convicts  upon  others, 
because,  in  the  association  of  the  wicked,  it  was  not  the  less  guilty 
who  acted  on  the  more  criminal,  but  the  more  depraved  who  influ- 
enced those  who  were  less  so.  The  prison  must,  therefore,  since  it 
was  impossible  to  classify  prisoners,  come  to  a  separation  of  all.^'^ 

^  de  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  p,  3. 
**  de  Beaumont   and   de   Tocqueville,   p.    10. 
^  de  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,   p.   21 


230  History  of  American  Prisons 

If  it  was  true  that  all  evil  in  prison  originated  from  the  intercourse 
of  the  prisoners  among  themselves,  it  followed  that  nowhere  was 
this  vice  avoided  with  greater  safety  than  in  Philadelphia.^^ 

Perpetual  seclusion  in  a  cell  was  an  irresistible  factj  which 
curbed  the  prisoner  without  a  struggle,  and  thus  deprived  alto- 
gether his  submission  of  a  moral  character  (by  which  the  authors 
seemed  to  mean  that  there  was  no  clash  of  emotions  and  circum- 
stances such  as  would  cause  the  ultimate  yielding  of  the  prisoner  to 
the  principles  of  the  prison  as  a  result  of  the  mastery  of  self, 
through  the  recognition  of  the  justice  of  the  position  taken  by 
the  prison).  The  French  critics  found  that  the  prisoner  obeyed 
much  less  the  established  discipline,  than  the  physical  impossibility 
of  acting  otherwise.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Auburn  system  gave 
to  the  prisoners  the  "habits  of  society"  (that  is,  the  painfulness 
of  compulsory  labor,  the  necessity  of  laboring,  and  the  necessity  of 
obedience  to  authority).®^ 

While  the  Pennsylvania  system  had  often  been  reproached  with 
rendering  labor  by  the  prisoners  impossible,  and  while  in  truth 
a  great  many  arts  could  not  be  pursued  by  a  single  workman  in  a 
narrow  place  to  advantage,  nevertheless  the  penitentiary  of  Phila- 
delphia showed  that  the  various  occupations  that  could  be  pursued 
by  isolated  men  were  sufficiently  numerous  to  occupy  them  use- 
fully.^^  The  Pennsylvania  system  was  expensive,  but  not  difficult 
to  establish,  and  once  established,  the  simplicity  of  its  methods 
would  enable  it  to  run  itself.^ 

At  Auburn,  continued  the  French  critics,  the  prisoners  were  more 
severely  treated;  at  Philadelphia  they  were  more  unhappy.  At 
Auburn,  where  they  were  whipped,  they  died  less  frequently  than 
at  Philadelphia  where,  for  humanity's  sake,  they  were  put  in  a 
^olitary  and  sombre  cell.^  De  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville  did 
not  hesitate  to  state  their  conviction  that  the  system  of  perpetual 
and  absolute  seclusion,  established  in  Philadelphia  in  full  vigor, 
would  prove  less  favorable  to  the  health  of  the  inmates  than  would 
the  Auburn  system.** 

On  the  othei^  hand,  the  moral  situation  in  which  the  convicts 
were  placed  was  eminently  calculated  to  facilitate  their  regenera- 
tion. The  system  seemed  especially  powerful  over  individuals 
endowed  with  some  elevation  of  mind.  The  absolute  solitude 
produced  the  deepest  impression  on  all  prisoners.*^  They  were 
particularly  accessible  to  religious  sentiments.  It  was  hard  for 
anyone  enjoying  the  ordinary  intercourse  of  free  society  to  feel 
the  whole  value  of  a  religious  idea  thrown  into  the  lonesome  cell 
of  a  convict.'^  Could  there  be  a  combination  for  reformation  more 
powerful  than  that  of  a  prison  which  handed  over  to  a  prisoner 
all  the  trials  of  solitude,  while  it  led  him  through  reflection  to 

3«  de  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  p.  23. 

37  de   Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  p.  24. 

88  de   Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  p.  34. 

s»  de   Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  p.  40. 

*•>  de  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  p.  47. 

**  de  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  p.  47. 

*i  de  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  p.  50. 

*2  de  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  p.  51.  ] 


History  of  American  Prisons  231 

remorse,  through  religion  to  hope  —  a  prison  which  made  him 
industrious  by  the  burden  of  idleness,  and  which,  while  it  inflicted 
the  torment  of  solitude,  made  him  find  a  charm  in  the  converse  of 
pious  m^n,  whom  otherwise  he  would  have  seen  with  indifference, 
and  heard  without  pleasure  ?  Without  doubt  the  impression  on  the 
criminal  was  deep ;  experience  alone  would  show  whether  the  im- 
pression was  durable.  It  was  to  be  questioned  whether  the  sudden 
transition,  at  the  end  of  the  prisoner's  term  from  the  solitary- 
cell  to  the  busy  outside  world  might  not  be  demoralizing.  Yet 
that  disadvantage  was  offset  by  the  advantage  that  the  prisoners, 
not  having  seen  each  other  or  known  each  other  in  prison,  would 
not  know  each  others'  faces  afterwards.^* 

Did  the  Pennsylvania  system  reform?  De  Beaumont  and  de 
Toqueville  emphasized  in  their  answer  to  this  question  an  important 
fact.  What  was  meant  by  *' reformation "  ?  In  a  literal  and 
specific  sense,  it  meant  the  radical  change  of  a  wicked  person  into 
an  honest  man  —  a  change  that  produced  virtues  instead  of  vices. 
Such  reformation,  spiritual  and  all  encompassing ,  must  he  very 
rare,  more  infrequent,  indeed,  than  even  the  chaplains  of  American 
prisons  believed.  Such  thorough-going  conversions  might  occur 
here  and  there,  but  there  existed  no  human  agency  of  proving  this 
complete  reformation.*^  Nevertheless,  the  French  critics  pointed 
out  that  at  Auburn,  one-third  of  the  pardons  were  given  on  the 
presumption  of  such  reformation. 

"The  theories  on  the  reform  of  the  prisoners  are  vague  and  uncertain," 
wrote  de  B.  and  de  T.  **It  is  not  yet  known  to  what  degree  the  wicked  may- 
be regenerated,  and  by  what  means  this  regeneration  may  be  obtained." 
(de  B.  &  de  T.,  p.  49.) 

Of  a  different  kind  of  reformation,  less  thorough,  but  yet  useful 
to  society,  there  were  many  instances:^ 

**  Perhaps  leaving  the  prison  he  is  not  an  honest  man,  but  he  has  con- 
tracted honest  habits.  He  was  an  idler;  now  he  knows  how  to  work.  His 
ignorance  prevented  him  from  pursuing  a  useful  occupation;  now  he  knows 
how  to  read  and  write;  and  the  trade  which  he  has  learned  in  the  prison  fur- 
nishes him  the  means  of  existence  which  formerly  he  had  not.  Without 
loving  virtue,  he  may  detest  the  crime  of  which  he  has  suffered  the  cruel 
consequences.  And  if  he  is  not  more  virtuous,  he  has  become  at  least  more 
jtidicious;  his  morality  is  not  honor,  but  interest.  His  religious  faith  is 
perhaps  neither  lively  nor  deep;  but  even  supposing  that  religion  has  not 
touched  his  heart,  his  mind  has  contracted  habits  of  order,  and  he  possesses  ^ 
rules  for  his  conduct  in  life.  Without  having  a  powerful  religious  conviction, 
he  has  acquired  a  taste  for  moral  principles  which  religion  affords;  finally, 
if  he  has  not  become  in  truth  better,  he  is  at  least  more  obedient  to  the  laws, 
and  that  is  all  that  society  has  the  right  to  demand." 

The  French  critics  found,  in  brief,  that  the  Pennsylvania  system 
would  afford  more  reformation  than  that  of  Auburn.  The  latter 
was  more  conformable  to  the  habits  of  men  in  society,  and  effected 
a  greater  number  of  reformations  of  a  kind  that  might  be  called 
''legal."     The  Pennsylvania  system  produced  more  honest  men, 

<3(ie  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  p.  52. 
«de  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  p.  55. 
*^de  Beaumont   and  de  Tocqueville,   p.   59 


232  History  of  American  Prisons 

and  the  Auburn  system  more  obedient  citizens.    The  advantages  of 
the  American  penitentiary  system  in  general  were  summarized : 

The  impossibility  of  the  mutual  corruption  of  the  prisoners. 
The  great  probability  of  their  contracting  habits  of  obedience  and  industry, 
which  would  render  them  useful  citizens. 
The  possibility  of  a  radical  reformation. 

William  Crawford,  secretary  since  1817  of  the  London  Prison 
Discipline  Society,*^  visited  for  the  British  Government  the  United 
States  in  1832  to  1833,  and  investigated  in  particular  its  State 
prisons.  His  findings  were  embodied  on  his  return  to  England  in 
1834  in  a  volume,  remarkably  complete  as  to  architectural  plans, 
facts  and  statistics ;  it  was  the  most  elaborate  published  in  any  land 
up  to  that  time.*^  Crawford  adhered  emphatically  to  the  Pennsyl- 
vania system.  He  uniformly  found  the  deterrent  influence  to  be 
very  great,  and  such  as  belonged  to  no  other  system  of  jail  manage- 
ment. The  prisoners  with  whom  he  talked  in  the  Philadelphia 
prison  said  that  the  discipline  in  prisons  on  the  Auburn  plan  was 
less  corrective  than  were  the  restraints  of  continued  solitude.  In 
the  Eastern  Penitentiary  the  segregation  from  the  world  was  certain 
and  complete.  He  could  perceive  no  angry  or  vindictive  feelings 
among  the  prisoners.  A  mild  and  subdued  spirit  prevailed  among 
them.  Solitary  confinement  seemed  to  him  a  powerful  agent  in 
the  reformation  of  morals.  Instances  had  occurred  in  which  pris- 
oners had  expressed  their  gratitude  for  the  moral  benefit  they  had 
derived  from  their  imprisonment.'^ 

The  discipline  seemed  to  be  safe  and  efficacious;  it  had  no 
unfavorable  effect  upon  the  mind  or  health.  He  recommended  for 
England  the  adoption  of  the  Pennsylvania  system  for  every  class 
of  offenders;  for  those  awaiting  trial,  witnesses,  and  for  those 
imprisoned  for  short  terms,  as  well  as  for  the  convicts.  Recognizing, 
however,  the  expensiveness  of  prisons  on  the  Pennsylvania  plan, 
he  found  himself  driven  to  consider  the  alternative  of  the  Auburn 
system  as  developed  at  Wethersfield,  but  he  recommended  solitude 
for  certain  classes  of  offenders.^" 

The  effects  of  the  Auburn  system,  Crawford  was  persuaded,  had 
been  greatly  overrated.^^  The  rule  of  silence  was  clandestinely 
broken,  notes  were  exchanged  and  spectators  were  gazed  at.  Severe 
punishments  were  necessary  in  order  to  preserve  the  system  of 
silence.  Invariably  the  lash  produced  strong  feelings  of  degrada- 
tion and  revenge.  The  discipline  at  Auburn  was  of  a  physical 
nature,  that  of  Pennsylvania  of  a  moral  nature.  The  whip  inflicted 
immediate  pain,  but  solitude  inspired  permanent  terror.  The  whip 
degraded  while  it  humiliated,  while  solitude  subdued,  but  did  not 
debase.  At  Auburn  the  convict  was  uniformly  treated  with  harsh- 
ness, at  Philadelphia  with  civility.  The  Auburn  prisoner,  when 
liberated,  conscious  that  he  was  known  to  past  associates,  and  that 

*''■  Julius,  d.   amerik.     Besserungs   Systeme.   Preface. 
*8  Same.  p.  32. 
*»  Crawford,  p.  11. 
BO  Crawford,  p.  31. 
61  Same,  p.  19. 


History  of  American  Prisons  233 

the  public  eye  had  gazed  upon  him,  saw  an  accuser  in  every  man 
he  met.  The  Philadelphia  convict  quitted  his  cell,  secure  from 
recognition  and  exempt  from  reproach.^^ 

A  striking  statement  of  Crawford  was  that  no  one  was  more 
emphatic  in  his  advocacy  of  solitary  confinement  (with  labor)  by 
day  and  night  than  the  warden  of  Wethersfield  —  the  prison 
regarded  by  the  advocates  of  the  Auburn  system  as  the  model 
prison  on  that  plan.^ 

Francis  Lieber,  the  translator  into  English  of  the  penitentiary 
study  of  de  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  was  himself  an  erudite 
and  painstaking  student  of  prison  discipline  of  his  time.  He  was 
born  in  Berlin  in  1800,  and  after  imprisonment  for  political  reasons^ 
by  the  Prussian  Government  in  1819  and  1824,  he  removed  to  the 
United  States  in  1827  and  settled  in  Philadelphia,  where  he  became 
the  editor  of  the  Encyclopaedia  Americana  (1829-1833). 

Lieber  citing  the  fact  that  prisons  had  been  called  hospitals  for 
patients  afflicted  with  moral  diseases  was  an  earnest  sponsor  of 
the  Pennsylvania  system,  which  in  his  opinion  worked  calmly  and 
steadily,  without  subjecting  the  convict  by  repeated  punishments, 
to  a  continual  recurrence  of  disgrace  for  misdemeanors  which  the 
common  principles  of  human  nature  were  sufficient  to  induce  him 
to  commit.^*  The  greatest  step  that  a  convict  of  the  common  class 
could  make  toward  reformation  was  from  thoughtlessness  to 
thoughtfulness.  Few  committed  to  prisons  were  accustomed  to 
think;  it  was  for  want  of  thought  that  they  became  guilty.  Sur- 
rounded as  they  were  at  Auburn  by  a  variety  of  objects  during  the 
day,  they  could  not  feel  the  same  inducement  to  reflection  as  under 
the  pressure  of  constant  solitude.  Lieber  had  asked  many  prisoners 
if  they  preferred  to  be  placed  together  with  others ;  almost  invari- 
ably they  considered  it  the  greatest  privilege  to  be  left  alone.^^ 

Theorizing  on  the  possibility  of  serious  mental  results  from  sepa- 
rate confinement,  Lieber  made  the  surprising  statement  that  all 
experience  proved  how  difficult  it  was  to  make  any  impression  on 
the  feelings  of  the  benighted  and  unhappy  subjects  of  criminal 
punishment.^^ 

Lieber  recognized  the  serious  expense  incurred  in  the  building 
of  the  Penitentiary,  but  he  held  that  other  similar  institutions  could 
be  built  far  more  cheaply.  But  even  though  prisons  on  the  Pennsyl- 
vania plan  proved  expensive,  the  reformation  it  effected  would 
warrant  the  increased  outlay.^*^  Prisoners  did  not  leave  the  Penn- 
sylvania institution  worse  than  when  they  entered.  In  separate 
confinement  a  specific  gradation  of  punishment  could  be  obtained 
as  surely,  and  with  as  much  facility,  as  by  any  other  system.^ 
Furthermore,  by  virtue  of  the  greater  severity  of  separate  confine- 
ment, a  greater  reduction  in  the  term  of  imprisonment  might  be 

62  Crawford,  p.  19. 

"  Same,  p.  31. 

"de  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  p.  292. 

«  Same,  p.  294. 

"  Same,  p.  296. 

«"  Same,  p.  297. 

»  Same,  p.  298. 


234  History  of  American  Prisons 

achieved.  Months  might  be  substituted  for  the  years  in  sentences, 
as  answering  all  the  ends  of  retributive  justice  and  penitential 
y  experienced^  The  cheapest  method  of  keeping  prisoners  was  that 
which  was  most  likely  to  reform  them. 

To  the  United  States  came  in  1835  Doctor  Niclaus  Heinrich 
Julius,  representative  of  Prussia,  to  study  our  prisons.  He  was 
the  leading  German  student  of  prison  discipline,  and  was  the  editor 
and  publisher  of  a  magazine  devoted  to  prison  science,  as  it  was 
developed  at  the  time.  Doctor  Julius  was  also  an  emphatic  advocate 
of  the  Pennsylvania  plan.^"  At  Auburn  there  was  too  much  dis- 
traction of  attention.  The  time  of  punishment  could  be  shortened 
at  Philadelphia  because  of  the  deeper  impression  produced  by 
solitude.  Auburn  had  a  more  physical  and  negative  effect,  Phila- 
delphia a  more  moral  and  positive  effect.  Other  factors,  already 
cited  under  previously  quoted  authorities,  were  reiterated  by  Julius. 
A  further  advantage  of  the  Philadelphia  plan  was  that  no  central 
hospital  was  necessary,  which  under  the  Auburn  plan  became  a 
place  of  idleness  and  verbal  communication.  If  necessary,  both 
sexes  might  be  housed  with  propriety  under  the  Pennsylvania  plan 
in  the  same  prison  since  all  rooms  were  separate. 

The  Pennsylvania  system  was  therefore  the  best  plan  in  Europe 
or  America  for  prison  discipline  and  for  reformation.^^  The  alleged 
detriment  to  health,  and  the  greater  mortality,  Julius  denied.  He 
also  denied  that  by  the  isolation  of  convicts  valuable  social  tenden- 
cies were  destroyed.  How  could  any  association  in  prison  of 
criminals  with  each  other  be  valuable?  Indeed,  even  the  Auburn 
plan  allowed  no  actual  association.  Doctor  Julius  stated  that  he 
found  wardens  of  prisons  on  the  Auburn  plan  who  said  that  if  they 
had  the  rebuilding  of  their  prisons  to  do,  they  would  build  on 
the  Pennsylvania  plan. 

»While  initial  costs  seemed  greater,  the  Pennsylvania  plan  never- 
theless dispensed  with  messhall,  hospital,  workshops,  chapel  and 
other  buildings  for  congregate  purposes.  The  extravagant  archi- 
tectural adornments  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  did  not  need  to 
be  repeated  in  future  prisons.®^  Private  vices  were  no  more  likely 
to  occur  under  the  Pennsylvania  system  than  under  the  Auburn 
system,  while  sodomy  was  rendered  impossible. 

To  Julius  a  prison  was  always  a  prison.  The  prisoner  must 
never  for  an  instant  forget  the  fact.  All  that  the  prisoner  possessed 
belonged  to  the  State,  for  the  eradication  of  the  debt  that  had 
arisen  through  his  guilt.^  The  prison  was  an  opportunity  for 
atonement.  Julius  was  strongly  opposed  to  any  alleviation  in 
prison  discipline  that  would  make  the  prison  anything  but  a  place 
of  repentance. 

From  France  came  a  second  delegation,  consisting  of  De  Metz 
and  Blouet.  De  Metz  was  a  counsellor  at  the  royal  court  of  justice 
in  Paris  and  Blouet  was  a  government  architect.     Their  mission 

B»de  Beaumont  and   de  Tocqueville,   p.    299. 

«o  Julius,     d.   Amerik.     Besserungs   Systeme,  p.  8ff. 

«i  Same,  p.  33. 

82  Same,  p.  39. 

«»  Same,  p.  256. 


History  of  American  Prisons  235 

was  especially  to  weigh  the  relative  merits  of  the  Auburn  and  the 
Pennsylvania  systems.  Their  report  to  the  French  Government 
was  statistically  and  architecturally  a  monumental  work.  These 
French  specialists  reaffirmed  the  preferences  of  other  European 
visitors  for  the  Pennsylvania  plan.^  It  eliminated  flogging;  the 
association  of  prisoners  while  in  prison,  and  their  mutual  recogni- 
tion after  discharge.  There  was  greater  reformative  value  in 
solitude ;  classification  of  prisoners  was  unnecessary.  There  was  no 
distraction  in  moral  and  religious  instruction,  and  the  solitary  cell 
furnished  to  the  prison  officials  a  better  chance  to  study  intensively 
the  individual  prisoner.  From  the  Philadelphia  prison  there  seemed 
to  be  less  chance  of  escape,  and  its  separate  cells  permitted  this 
type  of  prison  to  be  used,  if  necessary,  for  all  classes  of  criminals. 

**In  all  prisons  of  the  Auburn  type,  punishment  is  either  cruel  or  insuffi- 
cient. Silence  can  succeed  only  with  cruelty.  There  is  either  cruelty  or 
impunity. ' ' 

On  the  other  hand,  the  painstaking  analysis  of  Blouet  showed  the 
far  greater  expensiveness  in  construction  of  a  prison  on  the  Penn- 
sylvania plan.  Estimating  for  France,  Blouet  declared  that  an 
Auburn-type  prison  of  480  cells  could  be  built  in  Paris  for  932,000 
francs,  or  a  per  capita  cost  of  1,942  francs,  or  approximately  $388 
per  inmate.  A  prison  for  480  inmates  on  the  Philadelphia  plan 
would  cost  in  Paris  1,709,000  francs,  or  3,  561  francs  per  inmate,  or 
approximately  $712  per  inmate.  From  the  financial  standpoint,  the 
Auburn  system  was  much  more  economical  and  safe. 

Mondelet  and  Neilson,  the  Canadian  commissioners  who  followed 
in  1834  the  above-mentioned  men  in  their  investigation  of  the  two 
prison  systems,  also  declared  for  the  Pennsylvania  system  because 
it  offered  better  protection  to  inmates  both  in  and  after  the  institu- 
tion, and  partly  because  so  many  complaints  were  being  made  by 
the  mechanics  against  the  labor  conditions  under  the  Auburn  sys- 
tem. The  two  Canadians  recognized  that  the  Pennsylvania  build- 
ings cost  more  and  that  the  system  earned  less,  but  their  recom- 
mendations in  1835  against  the  Auburn  system  were  followed  by 
the  Legislature  of  lower  Canada,  and  Haviland's  plan  for  the 
Trenton  prison  in  New  Jersey  was  chosen  by  Lower  Canada  for  a 
model  of  the  prison  they  planned  to  construct.^ 

On  the  other  hand.  Commissioners  John  Macauley  and 
H.  C.  Thompson,  who  had  been  sent  early  in  the  thirties  from  upper 
Canada  to  examine  into  American  prisons  in  the  United  States, 
reported  in  a  statement  dated  Kingston,  upper  Canada,  November 
12th,  1832,  that  they  favored  the  Auburn  system  for  a  new  peniten- 
tiary in  upper  Canada  for  the  following  reasons :  ^ 

The  people  of  upper  Canada  favor  the  Auburn  system. 

There  are  important  testimonials  in  its  favor. 

Other  States  have  built  prisons  on  the  same  type. 

The  Pennsylvania  system  is  yet  in  the  experimental  stage. 

«*De  Metz  and   Blouet,  p.   34. 

^  Julius,     d.  Amerik,     Besserungs  Systeme. 

««  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1834. 


236  History  of  American  Prisons 

And,  finally,  international  approval  of  the  Pennsylvania  system 
came  in  1846,  when  at  the  first  international  prison  congress  at 
Frankfort  on  the  Main,  the  delegates  from  the  leading  European 
countries  passed,  by  almost  unanimous  vote,  the  following 
resolution : 

*' Separate  confinement  can  be  used  in  general  with  such  increasing  or 
decreasing  degrees  of  severity  as  are  conditioned  by  the  nature  of  the  offense, 
and  by  the  character  and  conduct  of  the  prisoners,  so  that  each  prisoner 
shall  be  occupied  with  useful  labor,  shall  have  exercise  each  day  in  the  open 
air,  shall  receive  religious,  moral  and  school  instruction,  shall  take  part  in 
divine  service,  and  shall  receive  the  visits  of  the  chaplain  of  his  own  re- 
ligious faith,  the  director  of  the  prison,  the  prison  physician,  the  members 
of  the  supervisory  board  and  of  the  prisoners'  aid  societies  which  may  be 
permitted  by  the  prison  rules." 

We  have  cited  above  an  impressive  sequence  of  opinions  highly 
favorable  to  the  Pennsylvania  system.  Against  these  formidable 
published  decisions  of  men  of  special  qualifications  were  arrayed 
practically  only  the  annual  publications  of  the  Boston  Society. 
Yet  that  organization  possessed  the  great  advantage  of  being  always 
alert  and  on  the  ground.  The  annual  reports  of  the  Boston  Society 
^ve  no  opinions  of  foreign  critics  unfavorable  to  Auburn  or 
yiavorable  to  Pennsylvania.  In  this  one  cannot  refrain  from  ques- 
Y  tioning  severely  the  ethics  of  Dwight.  While  de  Beaumont  and 
de  Tocqueville  had  been  translated  by  Francis  Lieber,  it  is  very 
doubtful  whether  the  publications  of  the  other  Europeans  had  any 
considerable  circulation  in  the  United  States. 

But  the  great  strength  of  the  opposition  to  the  Eastern  Peniten- 
tiary lay  in  three  objections,  which  were  never  allowed  by  the 
opponents  of  the  system  to  subside.  The  Boston  Society  argued 
as  follows : 

1.  The  Pennsylvania  system  was  extravagant  in  construction,  and  re- 
sulted in  a  serious  annual  financial  loss  to  the  citizens  of  the  State  in  its 

peration. 

2.  The  Pennsylvania  system  produced  a  higher  mortality  and  morbidity 
rate  than  did  the  Auburn  system. 

3.  The  Pennsylvania  system  produced  a  higher  proportion  of  insanity 
than  did  the  Auburn  system. 

These  were  serious  charges.  The  appeal  to  the  pocketbook  has 
always  been  potent.  If  other  States  were  actually  making  from 
their  prisons  on  the  Auburn  type  profits  above  all  expenses,  while 

/Pennsylvania's  prison  produced  an  annual  deficit,  this  carried  an 
almost  irresistible  suggestion  to  legislators  in  favor  of  the  more 
economical  system.  If  the  Philadelphia  prison  was  more  dangerous 
to  life  and  to  mind,  then  humanity  as  well  as  economy  justified  the 
adoption  of  the  Auburn  plan. 

In  the  years  from  1829  on,  a  mass  of  documentary  evidence  in 
annual  reports,  and  deductions  therefrom,  came  into  existence.  The 
Eastern  Penitentiary  was  ever  on  the  defensive.  From  this  often 
confusing,  incomplete,  and  contradictory  material  we  shall  now 
endeavor  to  determine  to  what  extent  the  strictures  of  the  Boston 
Society  were  tenable. 


/:: 


History  of  American  Prisons 


237 


1.  The  Pennsylvania  system  was  extravagant  in  construction 
and  resulted  in  a  serious  annual  financial  loss  to  the  citizens  of  the 
State  in  its  operation. 

The  annual  reports  of  the  board  of  inspectors  of  the  Penitentiary- 
carried  no  clear  financial  statements  during  the  period  now  under 
discussion.  Vague  references  to  the  cost  of  administration  appeared 
occasionally.  This  failure  to  publish  an  annual  financial  statement 
seemed  a  confession  of  industrial  failure,  and  it  was  legitimate  for 
the  Boston  Society  to  proclaim  the  probabilities  that  such  was  the 
case. 

An  analysis  printed  by  the  State  Auditor  of  Pennsylvania  in 
1897^  showed  the  follownig  disbursements  by  the  State,  in  the 
construction  and  operation  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  from  1821, 
when  the  law  establishing  the  prison  was  enacted  to  1844: 


Erection 

and 

completion 

of 

buildings,  etc. 

Furniture, 

equipment, 

etc 

Support 

and 

maintenance, 

inclusive, 

salaries 

1821 

$100,000 

80,000 

60.000 

891 .125 

4,000 

1824 

1825 

1826 

1828 

1829 

5,666 

4,000 

1,000 

1830 

1831 

120,000 

130.000 

60,000 

10,000 

1833 

1835 

■■■  ■i5,'666 

10,000 
8,000 
8.000 

1836 

1838 

1843 

1844 

$653,125 

$50,000 

$1,000 

The  cost  of  building  the  Penitentiary,  which  on  completion  pro- 
vided in  its  7  radial  cellhouses  for  586  inmates,  was  $653,125  up 
to  1844,  inclusive.  The  extravagance  was  openly  confessed  by  the 
friends  of  the  institution.  The  wall  itself  cost  about  $200,000.** 
The  Penitentiary  was,  according  to  George  W.  Smith  in  1833  ** 
the  only  edifice  in  the  country  calculated  to  convey  to  American 
citizens  *'the  external  appearance  of  those  magnificent  and  pic- 
turesque castles  of  the  middle  ages,  which  contribute  to  embellish 
the  scenery  of  Europe."  But  in  the  above  financial  statement,  the 
annual  cost  of  maintenance  and  of  salaries  does  not  appear.  The 
law  of  1829,  establishing  the  government  of  the  Penitentiary,  pro- 
vided that  the  expense  of  maintaining  and  keeping  the  convicts  in 
the  Western  and  Eastern  Penitentiaries  should  be  borne  by  the 

"  state  Prisons,  Hospitals,  etc.,  Embracing  their  History,  Finances,  etc.,  Vol.  II. 
C.  M.  Brush,  State  Printer,  Harrisburg,  Pa.,  1897. 
«8  B.  P.  D.  S.,  p.  827. 
«»  Richard  Vaux,  p.  56. 


238  History  of  American  Prisons 

counties  in  which  they  should  have  been  convicted.  These  charges 
are  to-day  remotely  hidden  away  in  inaccessible  county  documents. 
A  citation  by  McElwell  in  1835  shows  the  following  typical  charge 
for  the  County  of  Philadelphia: 

For  support  of  114  prisoners,  for  various  periods  from  January  1st — December 
31st,  1834,  provisions,  clothing,  fuel,  medicines,  etc.,  at  20  cents  a  day,  and 
$2.00  a  year  for  bedding $6,104  OO 

By  amount  at  credit  of  above  prisoners  for  labor 4,355  77 

(Due) $1,748  23. 

In  short,  the  counties  paid  the  differences  between  what  the  con- 
victs cost  the  State  and  what  they  earned  for  the  State.  These 
deficits  do  not  appear  in  the  annual  reports  of  the  Eastern  Peniten- 
tiary with  any  regularity.  The  following  comments  appear  in  the 
reports : 

1830.  The  expenses  of  the  institution,  not  including  salaries,  have  more  than 

been  met  by  the  proceeds  of  the  prisoners*  industries. 

When  the  prison  has  300  inmates  it  will  be  entirely  self-support- 
ing, including  salaries. 

1831.  Our  convicts  have,  with  but  a  few  exceptions,  maintained  themselves.^ 

1832.  Profits  for  the  past  year  have,  met  all  expenses  save  salaries.    We  hope 

for  revenue  from  convicts  when  building  is  completed. 

1833.  Labor  is  attended  with  difficulties.     Have  not  i^iet  expenses. 

1834.  Eeformation  of  the  prisoner  the  all-important  thing.     Our  prison  was- 

never  expected  to  be  self-supporting.  Had  a  reasonable  grant  for 
a  capital  fund  been  made,  a  different  result  in  our  pecuniary  affair* 
might  have  been  shown. 

1835.  (In  the  minority  report  of  the  investigating  committee: 

'*  There   has   existed   a  too   intimate  understanding  among  indi- 
viduals, a  frightful  blending  of  accounts. '* 

1835.  Deficiency,  $4,998.     Want  of  capital  a  bother. 

1836.  Pecuniary  affairs  never  showed  so  favorably  as  this  year. 

1837.  Considerable   loss  in  industries.     Hard  times  have  caused  decreased 

income. 

1839.  Our  institution  cannot  expect  to  be  lucrative  to  the  State. 

1840.  Partial  financial  statement,  showing  profit  and  loss  in  the  industries. 

The  contention  of  the  Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society  as  to 
initial  extravagance  and  annual  expense  was  thereby  proved.  Side 
by  side  with  the  unfortunate  financial  showing  of  the  Eastern 
Penitentiary  were  placed  the  following  statements : '° 

1828-1841.     Auburn  supported  itself  and  paid  salaries  of  officers  except  in 

1837-1838,  and  except  in  those  two  years  produced  surplus  of 

$69,460.59. 
1829-1844.     Wethersfield  supported  itself,  including  salaries,  every  year  save- 

six  months  in   1833,   and  netted  $78,699. 
1833-1842.     Sing   Sing   supported  itself,   including  salaries   every  year  save 

one,  and  netted  $119,527.24. 
1831-1842.     Massachusetts   State  Prison  supported  itself,  including  salaries^ 

every  year  save  two,  and  netted  $45,593. 
1835-1842.     Ohio    State    Prison    at    Columbus    supported    itself,    and    netted 

$124,963.78. 

70  B.  P.  D.  S.,  184..,  p.  275. 


History  of  American  Prisons 


239 


The  comparison  of  the  total  cost  of  construction,  and  cost  per 
capita,  as  given  by  Doctor  Julius,  was  also  highly  unfavorable  to 
the  Eastern  Penitentiary :  ^^ 


Pbison 


Capacity 


Cost 


Per 

capita 

cost 


Auhmrn^^ 

Sing  Sing 

Massachusetts 

Connecticut 

N.  Y.  C.  Penitentiary 

Maryland^' 

Washington,  D..  C 

Eastern  Penitentiary  (with  wall). 

(without  wall) 

Philadelphia  County  Prison 

New  Jersey 


700 
1,000 
300 
232 
240 
318 
160 
586 
686 
408 
192 


$450,000 

200,000 

86,000 

35,000 

32,000 

184,770 

180,000 

600,000 

400,000 

300,000 

200,000 


$584  42 

200  00 

286  66 

150  86 

133  33 

581  00 

1,125  00 

1,023  89 

682  00 

735  00 

1,041  00 


Auburn-type  prisons  were  generally  built  by  the  labor  of  prison- 
ers, reducing  the  costs  of  construction  by  one-fourth  to  one-third. 

2.  The  Pennsylvania  system  produced  a  higher  mortality  and 
morbidity  rate  than  did  the  Auburn  system. 

The  theoretical  basis  for  this  assumption  was  the  proposition 
that  constant  isolation  of  individual  prisoners  was  unhealthy  to 
the  body  and  conducive  to  disease.  The  practical  basis  of  this 
claim  was  the  yearly  death  rate,  as  compared  with  the  death  rate 
of  Auburn  and  of  sister  prisons. 

No  claim  based  on  the  statistics  of  one  year  or  of  a  few  years 
has  substantial  value.  There  was  a  comparison  habitually  made  of 
such  short  periods  by  the  Boston  Society,  followed  by  dogmatic 
assertions  of  Pennsylvania's  disadvantageous  death  rate. 

The  most  adequate  analysis  that  we  have  met  of  the  mortality 
statistics  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary,  is  found  in  an  article  **0n 
the  Effect  of  Secluded  and  Gloomy  Imprisonment,''  published  in 
1845.'^  The  treatise  aimed  to  show  the  peculiar  susceptibility  of 
the  negro  prisoners  to  disease  and  death.  The  following  were  the 
average  death  rates  of  white  and  colored  prisoners : 


Average 
number 
in  prison 


Average 
whites 


Average 
colored 


Deaths 


Whites     Colored 


Percentage 


Mortality 


Whites     Colored 


Total 


1830 

31 

1831 

67 

1832 

91 

1832 

123 

1834 

183 

1835 

266 

1836 

360 

1837 

387 

1838 

1839    

1840 

1841  

1842 

21.81 

47.75 

69.42 

89.30 

123.58 

154.74 

202.00 

233.00 

240.00 

245.00 

232.00 

203.00 

212.00 


9.19 

19.25 

21.58 

33.70 

59.42 

108.26 

148.00 

154.00 

161.00 

173.00 

162.00 

144.00 

130.00 


4.19 
4.18 
1.44 
1.11 

.81 
1.26 

.99 
3.00 
2.92 

.81 
3.88 
1.97 
1.41 


0 

10.02 

13.52 

0 

6.68 

4.61 

6.74 

6.49 

11.8 

4.62 

8.02 

4.61 

9.03 


4.4 
.8 
2.7 
2.6 
3.3 
4.3 


'1  Julius.     Sittleche  Zusbaende,  Vol.  II,  p.  239. 

"Crawford,  App.  p.  32, 

73  De  Metz  and  Blouet,  p.  38. 

'*  Jol.  of  Prison  Discipline  and  Philanthropy,  Vol.  I,  No. 


240 


History  of  American  Prisons 


According  to  the  tabular  statement,  the  average  rate  of  white 
deaths  in  the  first  thirteen  years  was  2.03.  The  average  rate  of 
colored  deaths  in  the  same  period  was  7.03.  F.  C.  Gray,  in  ''Prison 
Discipline  in  America,"  gave  the  average  of  deaths  of  whites  for 
the  period  1837-1846  as  2.18,  and  of  blacks  as  7.77. 

The  Penitentiary  officials  claimed  that  in  estimating  the  relative 
mortality  or  morbidity  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  as  compared 
with  Auburn  or  Wethersfield,  the  relative  number  and  character 
of  the  colored  population  of  the  prison  at  Philadelphia  should  be 
considered.  The  colored  population  in  the  prisons  of  the  United 
States  in  1837  was  as  follows  :^^ 


Prisons 


1 

Total 

Total 
colored 

prisoners 

prisoners 

122 

2 

678 

30 

92 

4 

291 

24 

392 

41 

387 

73 

753 

One-fifth 

190 

49 

386 

154 

141 

49 

76 

49 

Percentage 


Auburn 

Vermont 

Massachusetts. . . . 

Ohio 

Baltimore 

Sing  Sing 

Wethersfield 

Eastern  Pen 

New  Jersey 

Washington  (City) 


1.93 

4.41 

4.79 

8.24 

10.45 

18.86 

20.00 

25. 2& 

31.28 

34 .7& 

65.47 


As  early  as  1837  the  attending  physician  at  the  Eastern  Peniten- 
tiary reported  that  the  prison  was  burdened  with  a  sickly,  inefficient 
colored  population,  which  by  self -abuse  became  debilitated  in  mind 
and  body,  and  diseased,  making  three-fifths  of  the  prison's  mortal- 
ity .'^*  In  1838  the  prison  had  more  colored  prisoners  than  any 
other  prison  outside  the  slave-holding  State.  Pennsylvania  was 
bounded  by  three  slave  States.  Pennsylvania  was  the  recipient  of 
the  discontented  free  blacks,  worthless,  slaves  and  runaway  slaves. 
About  forty  per  cent,  of  the  inmates  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary 
were  colored.'^^  The  cases  of  mental  disorder  were  mainly  among 
the  colored  prisoners,  and  caused  by  masturbation.^*  The  mortality 
of  the  colored  prisoners  was  markedly  greater  than  that  of  the 
colored  population  in  Philadelphia. 

In  1839  the  physician  stated  that  the  prison  received  an  increas- 
ingly disproportionate  number  of  colored  convicts,  which  accounted 
largely  for  the  sickness,  mortality  and  medical  expense.  In  1842, 
the  colored  convicts  were  described  as  often  diseased  beyond 
recovery,  broken  down  with  repeated  imprisonment,  vicious  habits, 
debauchery,  privation  and  exposure.  They  were  proverbially  care- 
less and  improvident,  negligent  of  the  simplest  duties  of  the  toilet, 
incapable  of  the  expedients  familiar  to  intelligent  men  incarcerated 
like  themselves,  oppressed  with  strong  animal  propensities,  and 
unfortified  by  moral  or  intellectual  resources.^^ 


'B  Report  of  E.  P.  Inspectors,  1838. 
'«  Report  of  Inspectors,  1837,  p.  12. 
■"  Report  of  Inspectors,   1838,  p.   10. 
•^8  Same,  1838,  p.  13. 
"">  Report  of  Inspectors,  1842,  p.  25. 


History  of  American  Prisons 


241 


Mortality  statistics  from  the  chief  prisons  of  the  country  in  the 
period  under  discussion  do  not  permit  of  such  assembling  as  to  be 
properly  comparable.  The  periods  under  comparison  were  gen- 
erally too  brief  or  unequal  periods  were  compared.  We  append  a 
number  of  statistical  statements : 


Prison 

Period 

Percentage 
of  deaths 

Remarks 

1829-1842 

2.03 

7.03 

3.9 

1.8 

1.3 

2.2 

7.1 

1.6 

White  prisoners 
Colored  prisoners 

Eastern  Pen 

1829-1842 

1829-1842 

1824-1834 

1828-1834 

Auburn                    

Wethersfield                                     

1824-1834 

Virginia                               

1800-1834 

1823-1835 

It  is  apparent  that  the  deaths  in  the  Eastern  Penitentiary 
occurred  in  a  higher  percentage,  on  the  whole,  than  at  Auburn, 
Wethersfield  or  Massachusetts,  but  if  the  negro  deaths  were  elim- 
inated, the  proportion  would  have  been  little  more  than  in  the 
more  northern  prisons. 

The  following  table,  from  the  report  of  the  Prison  Association 
of  New  York  for  1845,^^  bears  out  the  preceding  statement : 


Prison 


Years  embraced 


Prisoners 

Deaths 

9,417 

179 

10,455 

324 

3,992 

70 

1,049 

7 

728 

10 

2,523 

63 

1,062 

19 

2,365 

198 

2,462 

71 

4,215 

156 

698 

9 

3,808 

147 

1,488 

42 

1,051 

8 

Average  for 
series 


Auburn 

Sing  Sing 

Massachusetts . . 
New  Hampshire 

Vermont 

Connecticut . . . . 

Kentucky 

Virginia 

Ohio 

Maryland 

Maine 

Eastern  Pen. . . . 
Western  Pen .  . . 
New  Jersey 


1830-43 

1830-43 

1830-43 

1830-43 

1833-38 

1830-43 

1837-43 

1830-43 

1836-42 

1832-43 

1830-37  and  43 

183(^43 

1830-43 

1837-43 


lin    52.6 
lin    32.2 
lin    57 
lin  149.8 
lin    72.8 


lin 
lin 
lin 
lin 
lin 
lin 
lin 
lin 


40 

55.9 

11.8 

34.6 

26.3 

74.4 

25.9 

35.5 


lin  131.2 


However,  the  death  rate  is  but  one  factor  in  an  estimation  of 
the  health  of  a  prison  —  and  one  that  can  be  most  seriously  affected 
by  a  liberal  exercise  of  the  pardoning  power.  The  Auburn  prison 
physician  reported  in  1844  that  it  had  long  been  a  principle  upon 
which  pardons  were  granted,  that  they  were  necessary  to  save  life. 
Twelve  pardons  were  granted  at  Auburn  for  that  reason  during  the 
year  in  question.  Obviously,  the  death  rate  in  that  year  was  mate-  / 
rially  reduced  at  Auburn,  and  the  procedure  of  pardoning  vitiated 
any  employment  of  the  death  rate  as  an  index  of  healthful  or 
disease-producing  conditions  within  that  prison. 

**  Report  of  Inspector,  p.  93. 


242 


History  of  American  Prisons 


But  at  the  Eastern.  Penitentiary,  also,  so  many  pardons  were 
granted  as  to  affect  materially  the  mortality  statistics,  in  case  such 
pardons  were  given  in  any  considerable  number  because  of  grievous 
illness : 

Pardons  Given  in  Eastern  Penitentiary  1842-1846  ^^ 


Ybab 

Whites 

Colored 

1842 

31 
15 
39 
30 
26 

2 

1843 

0 
7 

1844 ; . . 

1845 

2 

1846 

0 

131 

11 

The  several  prisons  showed  considerable  variation  in  the  statis- 
tics of  pardons.  The  following  illuminating  statement  was 
presented  in  the  report  of  the  Prison  Association  of  New  York  for 
1845.^  The  series  of  years  from  which  the  computations  were 
made  varied  also.  Thus,  the  statistics  for  Vermont,  Kentucky, 
and  Ohio,  for  instance,  covered  but  a  few  years,  and  presented  very 
incomplete  and  statistically  unrepresentative  percentages. 


Prison 

Series  of  Years 

Proportion 
of  pardons 

to  total 
number  of 
prisoners 

Auburn 

1831-33;   1839-43 

1831-43 

1  in  20 

1  in  22  7 

Massachusetts 

1830-43;   omitting  37,  38     

1  in  21  6 

New  Hampshire 

1830-43-   omitting  38,  39  41 

1  in  11  2 

Connecticut 

1830-43;   omitting  38 

1  in  34.6 

Vermont 

1843 

1840,  42 

1  in    7  7 

Kentucky 

1  in    5.4 

1830-43 

1  in  21 

Maine 

1830-37;   1842-43   

1  in  10  5 

Ohio       

1839,42 

1837-43 

1  in  81 

Maryland 

1  in  18.6 

Eastern  Penitentiary 

1830-43   

1  in  28.1 

1830-43 

1  in  10.9 

1839-40;    1842-43 

1  in    6.4 

As  to  the  health  of  a  prison,  who  shall  determine  the  factors 
whereby  judgment  shall  be  pronounced  ?  What  is  meant  by  health  ? 
Is  the  prison  to  be  judged  by  the  average  health  of  the  outside 
population?  What  is  the  standard  of  prison  health?  Is  the  State 
to  adopt  methods  that  will  prevent  in  each  individual  a  diminution 
of  his  strength  and  cheerfulness  ?  In  measuring  the  state  of  prison 
health,  what  credit  shall  be  given  to  the  improvement  in  health  of 
those  admitted  in  diseased  condition  ?  How  long  after  a  prison  has 
been  established  shall  we  regard  it  as  having  passed  the  experi- 
mental stage,  and  as  being  open  to  unqualified  criticism?     Who 

81  Gray.     Prison  Discipline  in  America,  p.  95. 

82  P.  108-110. 


History  of  American  Prisons  245 

shall  give  the  facts  regarding  the  state  of  health  or  disease  within 
the  prison?  Even  granting  that  the  prison  possesses  a  qualified 
medical  officer,  do  not  such  physicians  differ  in  diagnosis  and 
judgment?  What  allowances  should  be  made  for  such  differences 
of  opinion  ?    What  should  be  the  judgment  as  to  mental  health  ? 

The  above  questions,  asked  years  later,  in  1861,  by  William 
Parker  Foulke  of  Philadelphia,®^  show  very  pertinently  the 
practical  impossibility  of  determining  the  relative  healthfulnes» 
of  a  prison,  without  comprehensive  and  easily  comparable  statistics. 
The  Eastern  Penitentiary  was  from  the  first  under  the  care  of 
studious  and  apparently  competent  physicians.  Their  annual 
reports  were,  exceptionally  detailed  and  scholarly,  in  comparison 
with  those  of  other  prisons.  Relatively  comprehensive  vital  statis- 
tics were  published  annually.  The  very  care  exercised  by  the 
attending  physician  in  the  interested  discharge  of  his  duty  would, 
when  interpreted  in  terms  of  illness,  easily  give  to  uninterested  or 
hostile  readers  the  impression  of  the  apparent  presence  of  abundant 
illness.  Furthermore,  the  challenge  itself  of  the  antagonists  of  the 
Pennsylvania  system  brought  out  annual  reports  of  the  physician 
in  painstaking  detail. 

Doctor  Franklin  Bache,  a  great-grandson  of  Benjamin  Franklin, 
was  the  first  attending  physician.  De  Metz  and  Blouet  said  of  Doc- 
tor Bache  that  he  was  a  devoted  physician  and  student.  He  kept 
a  journal  of  the  most  important  facts  coming  under  his  observation. 
He  kept  a  history  of  each  prisoner,  during  his  entire  imprisonment, 
including  his  past  life,  his  conduct,  and  his  condition  at  discharge. 

In  March,  1837,  after  an  incumbency  of  eight  years,  he  issued  the 
following  vital  statistics : 

Of  the  312  prisoners  who  had  been  discharged,  up  to  the  close 
of  1836,  the  results  were,  at  time  of  discharge: 

Health  improved 78 

Health  the  same  as  at  entrance 164 

More  feeble,  but  not  sick 17 

Health  not  so  good 15 

Very  much  worse 4 

Died    33 

Suicide  1 

312 


''Speaking  abstractly,  separate  solitary  confinement  is  not  healthy;  an 
unnatural  condition  of  restraint  cannot  be  favorable  to  health.  Confinement 
can  be  relatively  healthy,  in  substituting  fewer  causes  of  illness  than  our 
population  would  meet  on  the  outside.  The  mortality  of  the  inmates  I  be- 
lieve to  be  lower  in  prison  than  it  would  be  on  the  outside.  In  my  seven 
years  the  average  mortality  has  been  three  per  cent.  A  certain  number  of 
cases  of  insanity  have  presented  themselves,  some  of  them  existing  prior  to 
entrance  and  continuing;  others  had  given  signs  of  insanity  prior  to 
entrance. ' ' " 

At  the  time  of  Doctor  Bache 's  testimony,  the  cells  in  the  lower 
tier  were  damp;  the  thickness  of  the  walls  caused  slower  change 

«3  Foulke.     Remarks  on  Cellular  Separation,  p.  43. 
«<De  Metz  and  Blouet,  2d  Part,  p.   28. 


244  History  of  American  Prisons 

in  temperature  in  the  stone  than  in  the  air,  and  congelation  ensued. 
The  population  had  to  struggle  against  the  evil  effects  of  walls 
recently  constructed,  and  cells  unequally  heated  by  hot  water. 
In  the  winter  of  1836-37,  two  prisoners  had  had  their  hands  frozen 
in  their  cells.^^  Doctor  Bache  acknowledged  that  certain  maladies 
could  be  caused  by  confinement  in  the  narrow  space  of  a  cell,  but 
that  the  prison  physician  must  do  the  best  he  could  with  the  means 
at  his  disposal.  Open-air  exercise  throughout  the  day  was  one 
remedial  measure.^ 

No  special  maladies  were  produced  by  separation.  The  predom- 
inant maladies  were  scrofulous,  and  lung  affections,  including 
consumption  and  dyspepsia.  Most  lung  affections  were  complicated 
with  diseases  of  the  stomach  and  intestines,  caused  by  indigestion 
and  irregularity  of  evacuations. 

Nevertheless,  Doctor  Bache 's  general  impressions  were  that  the 
effects  of  separation  were  highly  favorable  in  a  penitentiary  system, 
the  mortality  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  being  only  one-half  as 
much  as  in  the  old  Walnut  Street  Prison,  where  it  was  six  per  cent.*' 

It  is  impossible,  to-day,  to  fail  to  gain  the  impression  that  Doctor 
Bache,  in  his  statements,  was  seeking  to  be  honest  with  himself, 
and  at  the  same  time  to  put  the  best  face  forward  for  the  prison. 
We  know,  of  course,  that  the  close  and  constant  confinement  was 
detrimental  to  vigorous  health.  We  know  that  the  close  confinement 
would  develop  physical  conditions  that  might  not  appear  as  acute 
diseases,  but  that  would  predispose  to  disease,  and  would  weaken 
the  system.  It  would  have  needed  only  a  comparison  with  the 
/healthy  out-door  farm  life  on  the  prison  farms  of  to-day  to  demolish 
^any  complacement  belief  of  a  hundred  years  ago  that  the  separate 
confinement  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  was  harmless,  or  relatively 
so,  from  a  health  standpoint.  But,  since  prisons  had  to  be,  and  the 
system  had  been  adopted,  it  was  natural  to  bolster  it  up  within  the 
limits  of  admissible  statement. 

In  1837,  Doctor  William  Darrach  was  appointed  attending  phy- 
sician. In  the  following  year  he  reported  that  the  Penitentiary  was 
*'the  recipient  of  disease  and  the  dispenser  of  health,"  an  optimis- 
tic manner  of  phrasing  his  early  impressions.  Admissions  in  good 
health  amounted  to  55.5  per  cent. ;  discharges  in  good  health 
amounted  to  75.2  per  cent.  Eighty  prisoners,  entering  in  imperfect 
health,  brought  in  114  terms  of  disease,  of  which  39  were 
syphilitic,  24  thoracic,  15  abdominal,  11  febrile,  6  cephalic,  and  4 
scrofulous.  The  diseases  in  the  medical  register  requiring  special 
notice  were  smallpox  —  an  epidemic;  chronic  pleurisy,  inflamma- 
tion of  the  lungs,  and  acute  ' '  dementia, ' '  due  mainly  to  masturba- 
tion (cases  of  short  duration,  mainly  curable,  among  colored 
prisoners). 

In  1839,  the  physician  reported  that  what  long  confinement, 
masturbation,  full  animal  diet  and  cold  and  damp  might  do  to 
hasten  the  issue  was  worthy  of  consideration.    In  1842,  a  resident 

85  Same,  p.  125. 
88  Same,  p.  124. 
87  De  Metz  and  Blouet,  2d  Part,  p.  12o. 


History  of  American  Prisons 


245 


physician  was  appointed,  with  consequent  improvement  in  health, 
there  being  now  more  constant  medical  attention,  with  increased 
open-air  exercise.  The  separate  gardens  were  used  for  the  employ- 
ing of  invalid  or  convalescent  prisoners.  The  new  resident  phy- 
sician found  scrofula  and  consumption  rare  save  among  the  colored 
inmates,  the  amount  of  consumption  in  the  prison  being  less  than 
was  generally  supposed. 

During  1844  there  went  out  from  prison  —  after  a  confinement 

of  more  than  two  years : 

Per  cent. 

In  improved  health 4  13.3 

In    unimproved    health - 22  73.3 

In  impaired  or  less  perfect  health 2  6.7 

Died 2  6.7 

After  a  confinement  of  two  years  or  less 

In  improved  health 9  15.3 

In  unimproved  health 43  72.9 

In  impaired  or  less  perfect  health 3  5.1 

Died  4  6.7 

It  could  hardly  be  said  that  a  prison  that  sent  out  only  one- 
seventh  to  one-eighth  of  its  inmates  in  improved  health  and 
discharged  three-fourths  of  its  inmates  with  health  no  better  than 
when  they  came  in  was  **the  recipient  of  disease  and  the  dispenser 
of  health." 

At  the  close  of  the  period  we  are  studying  occurred  the  interna- 
tional prison  congress  at  Frankfort,  Germany,  at  which  gathering 
the  following  statistics  relative  to  health  and  mortality  at  the 
Eastern  Penitentiary  were  presented  by  Varrentrapp,  which  he  had 
himself  collected  and  coordinated : 

Received  at  Eastern  Penitentiary,  1829-1845,  imtl 2,059 

Discharged 1 ,715 

Of  whom  there  had  died 176 


Length  of  sentences  of  the 
2,059  inmates 


Number  of 
inmates 


Per  cent 


Number  of 
the  176 
who  died 


Per  cent 
who  died 


1  to  2  years . 

2  to  3  years . 

3  to  4  years , 

4  to  5  years . 

5  to  6  years .  , 

6  to  7  years . . 

7  to  8  years .  . 

8  to  21  years . 


400 

587 

511 

139 

121 

41 

52 

82 


30 
10 
8 
6 
7 
9 


According  to  Varrentrapp,  there  died,  of  the  176: 

In  the  first  year 50,  or  28 .4  per  cent. 

Second  year 63,  or  35 .7  per  cent. 

Third  year 41,  or  23 .2  per  cent. 

Fourth  year 10,  or    5 .6  per  cent. 

Fifth  year 7,  or    3.9  per  cent. 

Sixth  year 2,  or    2.8  per  cent. 

Seventh  year 2,  or    2.8  per  cent. 

Eighth  year 1,  or    1.4  per  cent. 

Varrentrapp   claimed  that  the  mortality  of  those   imprisoned 
for  longer  periods  was  not  greater  than  for  those  imprisoned  for 


J 


246  History  of  American  Prisons 

shorter  periods.  In  short,  there  was  no  cumulative  or  increased 
tendency  to  mortality,  with  those  of  longer  sentences,  but  rather 
a  decreased  mortality  rate. 

3.  The  Pennsylvania  system  produced  a  higher  proportion  of 
insanity  than  did  the  Auburn  system. 

We  have  already  seen,  in  the  quotations  from  official  reports  of 
the  Massachusetts  State  Prison,  and  from  Connecticut,  that  the 
insane  prisoner  had  become  a  serious  problem  and  a  menace  in  the 
prison.  Serious  developments  of  insanity  had  occurred  in  Auburn 
Prison,  when  the  experiment  in  solitary  confinement,  without  labor, 
had  taken  place  for  over  a  year  in  1822  and  1823,  and  had  resulted 
in  violent  deaths,  suicides,  and  mental  aberration.  Stories  of 
madness  within  the  solitary  cells  of  European  dungeons  were  in 
circulation  in  America.  General  Lafayette  had  condemned,  early 
in  the  twenties,  the  proposed  plans  of  Pennsylvania  for  solitary 
confinement,  and  the  Prison  Discipline  Society  of  Boston  had  made 
much  of  this  citation.  Throughout  the  campaign  of  the  Boston 
Society  against  the  Pennsylvania  system,  the  effect  of  separate 
confinement  upon  the  mind  was  marked  for  special  reference. 

The  effect  of  the  discussions  of  the  extreme  principle  of  separate 
confinement  without  labor  carried  over  into  the  period  subsequent 
to  the  opening  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary.  From  the  close  asso- 
ciation of  thought  between  such  solitary  confinement  without  and 
with  labor,  the  thesis  was  easily  developed  that  isolated  confinement 
of  prisoners  in  any  event  would  induce  a  large  percentage  of 
insanity. 

It  is  true  that  the  advocates  of  the  new  method  at  the  Eastern 
Penitentiary  based  their  optimistic  denials  of  probable  insanity 
largely  upon  theory.  Those  who  feared,  or  claimed  to  fear,  the 
development  of  insanity  under  such  conditions,  based  their  argu- 
ments on  the  constant  and  unrelieved  solitude  believed  to  inhere  in 
the  Pennsylvania  system,  whereas  under  the  Auburn  system  —  a 
so-called  *  *  social  system ' ' —  the  inmates  were  alleged  to  obtain  that 
change  and  variety  necessary  to  preserve  a  normal  mental  state, 
through  the  daily  though  silent  association  with  their  kind.  The 
supporters  of  the  methods  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  claimed  that 
the  prisoner  would  not  only  have  as  an  adequate  mental  diversion 
his  daily  industrial  tasks,  but  that  he  would  also  enjoy  the  whole- 
some association  —  even  though  brief  and  infrequent  —  with  the 
superintendent  and  various  other  officers  of  the  prison,  and  also 
with  members  of  the  board  of  inspectors  who  would  occasionally 
visit  his  cell,  besides  the  intermittent  visits  of  the  chaplain,  the 
physician,  and  the  representatives  of  the  Philadelphia  Society. 

The  annual  reports  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  were  therefore 
studied  with  the  keenest,  and  often  very  hostile,  attention.  If  the 
Pennsylvania  system  tended  to  produce  insanity,  that  system  was 
foredoomed  to  failure.  At  the  end  of  1830,  one  year  from  the 
opening  of  the  prison,  it  was  reported  that  neither  insanity  nor 
bodily  infirmity  had  been  produced  by  the  mitigated  separation 


History  of  American  Prisons 


247 


from  other  convicts.  In  1832  the  inspectors  reported  that  there  was 
a  disposition  in  some  counties  to  use  the  prison  as  a  bedlam.  That 
this  was  practically  inevitable  was  seen  already  in  other  States, 
and  in  our  chapter  on  * '  County  Prisons  and  Jails  "  ^^  it  will  appear 
how  impossible  it  was  to  keep  ' '  lunatics ' '  from  being  sent  to  county 
prisons  and  to  State  prisons  save  through  the  establishment  of 
special  institutions  for  their  reception.  The  inspectors  reported 
that  prisoners  had  been  received  whose  mental  states  made  them 
irresponsible  to  the  law.  In  short,  insane  convicts  were  being  sent 
to  the  prison  because  there  was  as  yet  no  insane  asylum  in  Pennsyl- 
vania to  which  they  might  be  sent  in  anything  like  adequate 
numbers.  And  the  way  was  thus  open,  statistically,  to  the  inspec- 
tors to  make  the  point  that  if  there  was  insanity  within  the  prison, 
that  insanity  has  existed  prior  to  the  admission  of  the  convicts  in 
question. 

In  1835,  the  superintendent's  report  emphasized  a  difference  of 
much  importance  in  the  mental  cases  under  care  or  observation: 

**A  minute  inspection  of  the  character  of  the  unhappy  inmates  of  the 
prison  has  developed  another  interesting  fact:  That  many  more  of  them 
than  was  supposed  are  really  irresponsible  beings.  These  may  be  divided 
into  two  classes:  First,  idiots,  or  those  who,  possessing  too  little  capacity  to 
take  care  of  themselves,  are  fit  subjects  for  the  guardianship  of  a  poor-house. 

"Second,  the  insane,  or  those  laboring  under  such  an  aberration  of  mind  in 
a  greater  or  less  degree  as  renders  them  unsafe  members  of  society.  Although 
not  being  answerable  for  their  actions,  they  cannot  be  regarded  as  proper 
subjects  for  a  prison.  In  some  of  the  States  provision  has  been  made  for 
such  persons,  and  I  should  rejoice  to  see  a  similar  one  adopted  in  Pennsyl- 
vaniHj  as  we  are  confident  that  several  of  this  description  have  been,  and 
some  are  now,  inmates  of  this  penitentiary.*' 

In  1837,  Doctor  Franklin  Bache's  incumbency  of  the  office  of 
prison  physician  ended.    He  stated  at  this  time: 

**A  certain  number  of  cases  of  insanity  have  presented  themselves,  some 
of  them  existing  prior  to  entrance,  and  continuing,  others  had  given  signs 
of  insanity  prior  to  entrance.  The  subject  of  insanity  in  relation  to  prisons 
is  a  difficult  problem.  One  must,  in  many  instances,  distinguish  between 
criminal  actions  and  those  caused  by  insanity.  Judges  and  juries  are  very 
reluctant  to  admit  insanity  in  defense.  In  some  instances,  in  consequence, 
insane  persons  have  been  sent  to  prison.  In  every  prison  there  will  be  a 
larger  or  smaller  number  of  cases  of  insanity.  I  have  seen  more  cases  of  in- 
sanity in  Cherry  Hill  (Eastern  Penitentiary)  than  in  Walnut  Street." 

A  recapitulation  of  the  period  from  1829  to  1837  shows  an 
excellent  record,  as  reported  by  the  prison  physician : 


Yeab 

Average 
number  of 
prisoners 

Caaes  of  insanity 

1829 

31 
67 
91 
123 
183 
266 
360 

None 

1830 

None 

1831 

4,  but  none  originating  in  prison. 

1,  not  attributable  to  mode  of  discipline. 

2,  not  originating  in  prison. 
None 

1832 

1833 

1834 

1836 

•8  Chapter  XXII. 


248 


History  of  American  Prisons 


In  1837,  Doctor  William  Darrach  became  the  attending  physician. 
He  found  in  that  year  no  case  of  insanity  that  had  been  produced 
by  separate  or  solitary  confinement.  There  were  cases  of 
*' dementia, ' ^  the  effects  of  ''vicious  conduct '*  (masturbation), 
which,  occurred  every  year,  but  they  usually  yielded  to  medical 
remedies.  Such  cases  of  mental  disorder  were  found  to  be  of  short 
duration  and  curable.  They  were  mainly  among  colored  prisoners 
and  developed  within  a  few  months  from  entrance.  Doctor  Darrach 
found,  on  the  other  hand,  that  hundreds  of  prisoners  had  been 
discharged  from  the  prison  in  a  better  state  of  body  and  mind  than 
when  they  entered  it. 

Although  26  cases  of  mental  disorder  occurred  during  the  year 
1839  the  physician  asserted  that  the  prisoners  had  been  committed 
who  were  insane  before  trial,  and  were  not  proper  subjects  of  penal 
treatment  and  punishment.  He  was  satisfied  that  the  separate  sys- 
tem of  discipline  was  not  chargeable  with  any  injurious  influence 
on  the  mind.  The  superintendent  pleaded  in  this  year  for  the 
establishment  of  a  State  hospital  for  the  insane. 

In  1843,  Doctor  Darrach  ceased  to  be  prison  physician.  During 
his  incumbency,  the  following  cases  occurred: 


Ybab 

Average 

number  of 

convicts 

Cases 

Remarks 

1837 

387 
401 
418 
394 
397 
342 

14 
18 
26 
13 
11 
13 

12  cured. 

1838 

All  cured  but  one 

1839 

Only  one  diseased  at  time  of  report. 

1840 

1841 

1842 

For  the  balance  of  1843,  and  for  a  part  of  1844,  Doctor 
Edward  Hartshorne  served  as  resident  physician.  He  found  that 
separate  confinement,  instead  of  stultifying  the  intellect,  operated 
in  general  in  the  opposite  direction.  The  causes  of  derangement, 
he  said,  originated  either  before  entrance,  or  from  causes  uncon- 
nected with  the  method  of  prison  discipline.  Nineteen  cases  of 
defective  intellect  (imbecile,  idiotic,  demented  and  insane)  were 
admitted  in  the  single  year  of  1843. 

Doctor  Given,  the  succeeding  resident  physician,  made  in  1844  a 
noteworthy  suggestion,  foreshadowing  the  research  tendencies  of 
many  years  afterwards: 

**From  the  well-known  hereditary  nature  of  insanity,  it  occurred  to  me 
that  a  careful  register  of  all  prisoners  in  whose  families  mental  diseases  pre- 
vailed would,  in  the  course  of  time,  throw  considerable  light  upon  its  develop- 
ment in  prison,  and  would  also  show  the  parallelism  of  insanity  and 
crime.     .     .     . 

**I  found  that  20.2  per  cent,  of  all  prisoners  received  since  the  date  of 
my  appointment  had  insane  relatives,  all  of  whom,  with  one  exception,  were 
not  further  removed  than  uncles  or  aunts.'' 


History  of  American  Prisons 


249 


Here  was  a  direct  forerunner,  in  bent  of  mind,  of  Richard  Dug- 
dale,  who  thirty  years  later,  in  the  State  of  New  York,  made  the 
famous  study  of  the  **  Jukes"  family,  led  thereto  by  the  discovery 
of  the  many  persons  by  the  same  family  name  in  the  prisons,  asy- 
lums and  almshouses  of  New  York. 

The  recapitulation  for  the  years  1843  and  1844  is  as  follows : 


Year 

Average  No.  of 
convicts 

Cases  developed 

Remarks 

1843 

334 
360 

5 
5 

Only  one  under  treat- 

1844                       

ment. 
2  of  5  entirely  cured. 

A  third  improved. 

The  above  record  of  the  first  sixteen  years  cannot  be  said  to  have 
shown  a  serious  degree  of  insanity  directly  caused  by  isolated  and 
continued  cellular  confinement  —  basing  our  presumptions  upon 
the  given  figures.  Most  of  the  insanity  existed,  it  was  alleged,  prior 
to  admission  to  the  Penitentiary.  The  physicians  of  the  institution 
were  alert,  gifted  with  professional  zeal,  and,  by  the  nature  of  the 
prison  discipline,  observant  of  the  inmates.  The  contract  system 
was  not  conducted  with  driving  intensity.  The  charge  of  subor- 
dinating health  and  mental  aberration  in  prisoners  to  prison  profits 
could  not  be  brought  against  this  prison.  Men  were  not  forced  to 
toil,  though  obviously  physically  or  mentally  ill,  as  was  the  case  in 
Auburn,  Sing  Sing  and  Massachusetts. 

And  comparisons  between  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  and  other 
prisons  were  not  possible,  with  satisfactory  accuracy.  The  vital 
statistics  were  inadequate.  However,  a  commissioner  appointed 
hy  the  New  York  Prison  Association  to  make  a  report  on  the 
prevalence  of  convict  insanity  stated  in  1846  : 

**  Whilst  inspecting  the  prison  at  Auburn,  we  were  struck  by  the  great 
number  of  individuals  affected  by  mental  aberration,  whose  cases  appeared  to 
have  quite  escaped  the  doctor's  observation.  Some  few  of  the  most  excitable 
were,  we  understood,  under  treatment.  .  .  .  The  experience  of  the  last 
few  years,  and  the  facts  observed  in  our  prisons,  tends  to  confirm  us  in  the 
opinion  that  cases  of  mental  derangement  are  much  more  frequent  in  the 
prisons  on  the  Auburn  system  than  are  mentioned  in  the  reports." 

We  turn  now  from  the  discussion  of  the  amount  of  insanity  to 
the  number  of  recommitments  to  the  Penitentiary,  or,  in  other 
words,  to  the  presence  of  recidivism.  The  success  of  a  penitentiary 
system  has  always  been  supposed  to  be  indicated  to  an  extent  by 
the  proportion  of  inmates  passing  through  an  institution  who  do 
not  again,  so  far  as  is  known,  get  into  that  prison,  or  into  some 
other.  But  it  is  still,  in  the  year,  1921,  impossible  to  secure  in  the 
United  States  sufficiently  comprehensive  prison  statistics  to  deter- 
mine with  exactitude  the  results  of  any  prison,  in  terms  of 
''repeaters"  or  ''recidivists."  The  difficulty  is  inherent  in  the 
fact  that  an  inmate  may  never  return  to  the  same  prison,  after 
once  discharged,  but  may  subsequently  appear  in  a  number  of 
prisons  in  other  States  or  even  in  the  same  State. 


250  History  of  American  Prisons 

Therefore,  to  attempt  to  measure  the  success  of  the  Eastern 
Penitentiary  by  a  measure  of  recidivism  within  that  particular 
prison  would  be  unsatisfactory,  though  arguments  were  made  and 
refuted  along  exactly  these  lines.  If  a  prison,  for  instance,  main- 
tained a  most  severe  regime,  or  instituted  some  new  form  of 
discipline,  it  was  reflected  for  a  time  in  the  tendency  of  criminals 
in  the  communities  to  ''take  a  chance"  as  was  evidenced  when  the 
Walnut  Street  Prison  opened,  and  later,  in  the  earliest  years  of  the 
Eastern  Penitentiary.  But  such  deterrent  effects  do  not  tend  to 
prolong  themselves,  and  familiarity  breeds  a  certain  contempt  for 
any  new  system. 

Yet  the  assumption  is  fair  that  in  many  instances,  one  experience 
with  a  prison  system  has  sufficed  to  cause  the  prisoner  to  determine 
not  to  commit  further  crime.  Certainly,  any  large  proportion  of 
recidivism  would  indicate  a  failure  on  the  part  of  the  prison  to 
function  successfully,  though  the  converse,  as  we  have  said,  would 
not  necessarily  be  true.  The  predominant  cause  in  such  a  reforma- 
tion might  be  the  ''radical  reformation,"  or  spiritual  conversion, 
described  by  de  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  or  it  might  be  the 
*' legal"  reformation,  analyzed  by  the  same  authors  and  critics. 
Perhaps  the  dominant  reason  for  non-return  to  prison  might  be  the 
deterrent  effect  of  a  severe  penitentiary  discipline  —  though  such 
severity  of  treatment  has  never  appeared  to  be  a  consistently  deter- 
ring factor  in  the  reduction  of  crime.  Or,  there  may  not  have 
resulted  an  actual  state  of  reformation  in  the  discharged  prisoner, 
and  so  the  marked  reduction  in  recommitments  may  be  simply  an 
index,  as  we  have  pointed  out,  of  the  transfer  of  activities  outside 
the  law  in  other  States. 

The  proponents  of  the  Pennsylvania  system  claimed  that  the 
association  of  prisoners  with  each  other,  even  without  the  power 
of  communication,  was  the  cardinal  error  of  the  Auburn  system. 
The  separation  of  the  prisoners  was  the  vital  principle  of  the 
Pennsylvania  system: 

"The  questions  of  original  cost,  kinds  of  labor,  or  capacity  to  be  self- 
supporting  have  no  direct  concern  with  the  system  of  punishment.  If  the 
punishment  by  the  separation  and  individual  treatment  of  the  convict  secures 
society  and  protects  the  people ;  deters  from  crime,  and  punishes  the  offender ; 
reforms  the  individual;  returns  him  to  his  former  social  relations  better,  or 
no  worse,  than  when  he  was  separated  from  them  by  his  imprisonment;  pre- 
vents the  organization  of  a  criminal  class  in  the  community;  then  the  prin- 
cipal purposes  and  the  highest  aims  of  punishment  are  obtained.  .  .  . 
A  congregate  prison,  the  system  of  congregating  prisoners  for  work,  unless  it 
is  profit  making,  could  not  be  regarded  as  defensible." 

The  basically  weak  point  of  the  Pennsylvania  system  was,  that 
while  it  was  obviously  humane,  it  could  not  prove  itself  superior  to 
the  Auburn  system  as  a  profit-maker,  an  institution  of  economy, 
or  one  markedly  more  able  to  reform  the  individual,  maintain 
a  lower  percentage  of  sickness,  death  or  insanity,  or  show  an 
appreciably  lower  percentage  of  recidivism.  It  could  in  general 
refute  the  charges  of  the  Prison  Discipline  Society  of  Boston  that 
it  was  markedly  higher  in  all  these  lines,  but  it  could  offset  with 


History  of  American  Prisons  251 

difficulty  the  practical  and  weighty  arguments  that  the  Auburn 
system  was  a  money-maker  and  that  prisons  of  that  type  cost  much 
less  to  build.  Therein  lay,  for  this  country,  probably  the  two 
conditioning  factors  that  led  to  the  erection,  almost  universally,  of 
State  prisons  of  the  Auburn  type.  The  basic  question  was  one  of 
money  —  not  of  humanity.  Auburn-type  prisons  cost  less  and  made 
more  than  did  the  Pennsylvania-type.    That  settled  it ! 

Yet  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  made  an  auspicious  beginning  in 
the  matter  of  recidivism.  Up  to  1833,  four  years  after  the  opening, 
no  discharged  prisoner  had  been  recommitted.  They  had  either 
reformed  or  gone  to  other  States.  There  was  in  the  criminal  com- 
munity great  terror  of  the  Penitentiary.  The  inmate  population 
of  both  the  Eastern  and  the  Western  Penitentiaries  was  in  1835, 
but  a  little  over  500,  whereas  in  1829  there  were  629  in  the 
Walnut  Street  Prison  alone.  In  1832,  the  inspectors  of  the  Eastern 
Penitentiary  stated  that  the  reduction  in  the  number  of  commit- 
ments to  prison  was  due  to  the  entire  separation  of  the  convict  from 
his  fellows,  from  the  outside  world,  and  from  his  family  and  friends. 

By  1835,  however,  the  recommitments  were  occurring.  Of  the 
189  inmates  discharged  since  1829,  16  had  been  recommitted.    In 

1837,  of  prisoners  received,  19  had  previously  been  inmates. 

Concern  was  now  expressed  regarding  the  difficulties  experienced  by 
discharged  convicts  in  finding  employment.  Houses  of  employment 
should  be  established  on  a  large  scale,  near  the  cities  and  large 
towns,  for  all  who  were  able  and  willing  to  work. 

Reconvictions  mounted  seriously  in  1838,  being  47  of  the  178 
admissions,  or  26  per  cent.  The  board  of  inspectors  were  driven 
to  explanations  for  their  apparent  lack  of  success,  and  stated  that 
of  the  35  recommitted  inmates,  26  were  convicts  who  had  prison 
records  in  other  prisons  also.  The  board  confessed  that  it  was 
worrying,  in  that  it  recommended  a  law  that  would  impose  on 
each  reconvicted  person  an  additional  term  of  imprisonment,  over 
and  above  the  sentence  for  the  specific  offense.  In  other  States, 
said  the  inspectors,  such  additional  penalties  were  imposed,  and 
reconvictions  were  not  so  frequent. 

The  Prison  Discipline  Society  reported  that  the  recommitments 
to  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  since  its  opening  had  been  1  in  8.64 
admissions.  In  short,  the  Penitentiary  had  already  failed  to  meet 
the  hopes  and  the  sanguine  promises  of  its  enthusiastic  promoters. 
Great  initial  expense,  annual  deficits,  no  adequate  annual  state- 
ments of  receipts  and  disbursements,  and  certain  obvious  disad- 
vantages of  administration  in  a  prison  where  prisoners  must  be 
dealt  with  individually,  were  facts  staring  the  board  of  government 
of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  in  the  face. 

Seeking,  other  reasons  for  the  failure  to  be  a  model  prison  in 
matters  of  reformation,  a  new  argument  was  presented  by  its  adher- 
ents. Before  the  Pennsylvania  system  could  be  said  to  be  in  full 
operation,  each  county  must  also  possess  a  prison  for  the  separate 
confinement  of  those  accused  and  awaiting  trial,  as  well  as  of  those 
serving  jail  sentences.     The  damage  and  the  contamination  was 


252 


History  of  American  Prisons 


already  effected  in  the  lesser  prisons,  and  the  convict  came  to  prison 
irretrievably  ruined.  This  argument,  unfortunately,  applied  just 
as  potently  to  other  State  prisons  operating  on  the  Auburn  plan, 
and  it  applies  to-day  with  all  the  force  of  this  earlier  statement 
in  1838. 

The  following  table  from  Julius  is  interesting,  bringing  the 
statistics  in  collated  and  comparative  form  from  a  number  of  State 
prisons,  but  the  various  items  are  often  not  at  all  comparable.  For 
instance,  the  percentage  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  appeared  most 
favorable,  one  recidivist  in  thirty-five  being  recorded,  in  comparison 
with  Auburn,  one  in  twenty-three.  But  Auburn's  figures  ran 
through  sixteen  or  seventeen  years,  while  the  figures  of  the  Eastern 
Penitentiary  were  for  a  space  of  only  five  or  six  years.  Auburn  had 
hundreds  of  ' '  graduates, ' '  where  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  had  but 
a  few,  in  the  general  public.  Other  differences  are  obvious,  and 
need  not  be  commented  upon. 


Prison 

Period 

Total  Prisoners 
received 

Recognized 
Recidivists 

Proportion  of 
Recidivists 

Eastern  Penitentiary 

Western  Penitentiary 

Auburn     

1829-35 
1826-33 
1817-33 

1797-33 
1819-33 
1818-35 
1812-33 
1816-33 
1824-33 
1812-34 
1800-33 

554 

324 

2215 

7522 

1355 

1722 

407 

627 

469 

2670 

1736 

16 
20 
97 

754 

261 

309 

19 

59 

44 

308 

85 

lin35 
linl6 
lin23 

State  Prison  in   New   York, 

and  Sing  Sing  Prison 

Alassachusetts       

linlO 
1  in  5 

lin6 

lin21 

linll 

Maine 

linl2 

Maryland                   

lin9 

Virginia 

lin20 

CHAPTER  XX 


KENTUCKY 

The  establishment  in  1798  of  the  State  Penitentiary  in  the 
frontier  State  of  Kentucky  was  the  beginning  of  a  very  interesting 
development  of  a  *' home-made "  prison  system  in  the  then  **Wild 
West. ' '  Far  removed  from  centers  of  civic  influence,  Kentucky  was 
comparatively  a  wilderness,  with  a  population  of  some  130,000.  It 
had  been  admitted  to  Statehood  in  1792,  and  was  prior  to  that  a 
part  of  Virginia.  The  settlement  of  the  State  by  immigrants  from 
the  Eastern  colonies  was  reflected  in  the  variety  of  birthplaces 
registered  in  later  years  by  the  prison  population.  As  late  as  1835, 
the  other  States  in  the  Union  furnished  80  of  the  inmates,  as 
compared  with  82  born  in  Kentucky  itself. 

The  convict  in  the  early  days  of  Kentucky  was  said  to  be  a 
daring  and  desperate  character,  as  was  natural  in  a  frontier  exist- 
ence, and  he  required  the  most  rigid  discipline  and  constant  watch- 
ing to  keep  him  within  the  prison  walls  and  to  force  his  compliance 
with  the  rules  of  the  prison.  Horse-stealing  and  other  thefts,  as 
well  as  crimes  of  violence,  were  characteristic  of  the  earlier  years. 
The)  list  of  the  more  frequent  crimes  from  1800  to  1815  was  as 
follows : 

Horse-stealing   55      Eape 4 

Felony    (not  specified) 46      Perjury  3 

Larceny    (grand  and  petty) 23       Counterfeiting  3 

Manslaughter  23      House  burning  2 

Stealing  slaves 6 

Virginia  had  established  its  own  penitentiary  system  in  1796, 
followed  in  two  years  by  Kentucky.  Both  States  drew  with  much 
literalness  upon  the  penitentiary  system  that  had  just  developed 
at  the  Walnut  Street  Prison  in  Philadelphia.  Before  1796  or 
1797,  at  which  time  the  act  of  the  Kentucky  Legislature  made 
murder  in  the  first  degree  the  only  capital  crime,  twenty-six  felonies 
had  been  punishable  by  death.  The  widespread  influence  of  the 
blood-abhorring  Quakers  thus  reached  Kentucky,  and  gave  to  the 
frontier  State  the  chance  to  say  later  with  frequency  that  in  the 
early  history  of  the  Kentucky  prison  system  there 

**was  a  degree  of  philanthropy  and  sound  philosophy  not  surpassed  elsewhere 
in  the  world." 

The  new  State,  with  small  and  scattered  population,  was  of  course 
poor.  Popular  subscriptions  of  money  or  one  acre  of  land  —  which 
might  be  sold  to  bring  in  cash  —  were  asked  about  the  year  1796, 
with  which  to  build  the  prison.  The  prison  was  to  be  large  enough 
to  hold  30  persons.  The  program  of  prison  discipline  was  far  more 
complete  than  was  for  a  long  time  the  prison  itself.    As  in  Phila- 

[253] 


254  History  of  American  Prisons 

delphia,  solitary  confinement  during  not  less  than  one-twentieth 
nor  more  than  one-half  of  the  sentence  was  mandatory,  and,  as  in 
other  States,  so  here  it  was  found  impracticable  to  carry  out  the 
law. 

Inmates  were  to  be  instructed  in  branches  of  labor.  Frankfort, 
the  capital  of  the  State,  was  chosen  as  the  location  of  the  prison. 
The  first  convict  was  received  in  1800.  The  administration  of  the 
prison  was  under  a  board  of  six  inspectors.  The  annual  salary 
of  the  keeper  was  $333.33,  and  of  the  deputy  keeper  $100.  The 
first  keeper  was  John  Stuart  Hunter,  who  had  emigrated  from 
Philadelphia  in  1783,  and  was  described  as  ' '  an  amiable  gentleman, 
very  sanguine,  and  somewhat  visionary  in  his  notions."  To  save 
money.  Hunter  was  also  appointed  physician.  A  sample  report  of 
his  treatment,  reported  to  the  board  of  inspectors  in  1802,  was  the 
following : 
April  16,  1802,       T.  Jones  — colic. 

1  dose  castor  oil. 

Bled. 

Anodyne  —  recovered. 

For  some  months  after  the  opening  of  the  prison,  the  number 
of  inmates  did  not  equal  the  number  of  inspectors.  Treatment  was 
of  an  intimate  and  individualistic  character.  The  board  voted,  for 
instance,  on  October  9th,  1800,  that 

"Peter  Winebrenner  (a  convict),  be  allowed  3  d.  on  each  pair  of  shoes  he 
makes  of  best  quality;  2  d.  for  second  quality.  For  best  boots,  12  d. ;  for 
second  quality,  9  d. ;  and  those  under  him  be  allowed  2  d.  per  pair  of  best 
shoes,  etc.  The  weavers  to  be  credited  4  d.  for  each  yard  of  cloth  of  600  or 
under;  for  finer  quality,  1  d.  more.'^ 

The  rules  of  the  period  give  a  picture  of  the  prison  routine. 
On  the  first  of  May  and  of  November,  two  new  outfits  of  clothes, 
underwear,  etc.,  were  given.  The  bed  equipment  consisted  of 
coarse  country  tow  linen ;  of  a  bed  tick  filled  with  straw  or  chaff ; 
two  woolen  blankets  and  a  bunk.  The  linen  of  the  prisoners  was 
changed  once  a  week.  Prisoners  were  to  bathe  when  directed.  They 
were  to  wash  their  hands  and  faces  before  breakfast.  Heads 
and  beards  were  to  be  closely  shaven  on  Saturday  evenings,  and 
at  the  same  time  the  convicts  were  to  wash  and  iron  their  own 
clothes.  Blankets  were  to  be  washed  on  the  first  Mondays  of 
January,  April,  July  and  October.  Cell  walls  were  to  be  white- 
washed the  last  Saturday  in  April  and  October,  with  an  extra  ration 
at  the  time  for  the  convicts  performing  this  service. 

The  physician  was  to  keep  a  record  of  the  sick,  and  lay  the  same 
before  the  board  of  inspectors  twice  a  year.  No  liquor  was  to  be 
introduced  into  the  prison,  under  a  penalty  of  a  twenty-dollar  fine. 
No  visitors  without  passes  were  to  be  admitted,  except  officers  of 
the  prison,  ministers  of  justice,  members  of  the  General  Assembly 
and  ministers  of  the  Gospel.  The  labor  hours  were  like  those  at 
Philadelphia.  The  prisoners  might  walk  and  air  themselves  in  the 
yard,  as  the  keeper  should  permit.  No  games  of  chance  were 
allowed,  nor  any  other  sports  save  by  permission  of  the  keeper. 


History  of  American  Prisons  255 

Convicts  might  read  in  their  leisure  time,  and  donations  of  books 
were  asked.  There  was  to  be  a  plain,  practical  discourse  on  Sunday 
morning.  For  prisoners  violating  rules,  there  were  solitary 
''refractory  cells,"  and  for  attempted  escapes  there  were  the 
punishments  of  irons  and  solitary  confinement.  In  1802,  labor 
accounts  were  opened  with  each  prisoner,  as  in  Philadelphia,  but 
in  1810  this  system  was  abandoned  as  impracticable. 

The  ' '  days  of  small  things ' '  lasted  at  the  Penitentiary  for  many 
years.  Watchmen,  for  instance,  received  but  $10  a  month,  yet 
might  be  fined  $40,  if  it  were  shown  that  they  had  not  used  all 
diligence  to  prevent  a  successful  escape.  Convicts  were  credited 
for  their  work,  and  debited  for  clothing,  maintenance,  etc.  In 
1802  the  agent  —  who  was  the  financial  and  industrial  manager  of 
the  prison  —  was  ordered  by  the  inspectors  to  charge  each  convict 
as  follows : 

For  clothing  per  year - $20  00 

For  subsistence,  and  the  expense  of  watchmen  and  agent 36  00 

When  there  are  more  than  10  convicts 31  50 

And  so  on,  down  to  20  convicts 15  25 

In  1804,  when  three  convicts  had  escaped,  the  rule  was  made  that 
convicts  should  be  debited  with  proportionate  share  in  the  expenses 
of  retaking  convicts,  and  five  prisoners  were  charged  an  equal  share 
of  the  expenses.  Furthermore,  the  courts  visited  costs  on  the  con- 
victed prisoners,  which  the  prisoners  should  pay  off  from  their 
share  of  the  profits  of  their  labor.  George  Fielding,  for  instance, 
about  1807  was  sentenced  to  the  ''jail  and  penitentiary  house,"  for 
two  years,  with  the  following  costs : 

Clerk 's  fees $9  66 

Sheriff 's    fees 1  H 

Attorney 's    fees 2  50 

Veniremen 's  allowance 14:  93 

Called  court,  expenses  of 10  61 

$38  81 

There  were  frequent  additional  charges,  as  in  the  following 
case : 

To  the  sheriff,  summoning  23  men  as  guards $4  83 

To  one  rope,  to  confine  prisoner  on  taking  him  to  penitentiary 25 

To  distance  of  17  miles,  at  12  1-2  cents  a  mile 2  12V^ 

To  23  guards,  for  traveling  17  miles,  at  3  cents,  going  and  returning....  23  46 

$30  66y2 

Rules  of  punishment,  some  of  them  unique,  were  developed  in  the 
first  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Any  convict  commencing  a 
quarrel  with  another  should  "suffer  such  punishment  (within  the 
prison)  as  should  be  awarded  by  an  impartial  jury,  but  not  over 
four  lashes,  or  10  hours  of  solitary  confinement."  Any  prisoner 
who  struck  another,  when  the  blow  was  not  returned,  was  to  receive 
on  the  bare  back  such  number  of  lashes  as  should  satisfy  the  injured 
person  —  but  not  to  exceed  twenty  lashes,  and  not  over  ten  a  day. 
A  retaken  escaped  convict  should  receive  thirty  lashes,  and  those 


256  History  of  American  Prisons 

convicts  giving  bribes  thirty  lashes.  A  convict  who  attempted  to 
burn  the  prison  in  1807  was  sentenced  to  10  lashes  a  day  for  ten 
days.  In  this  year  the  ball  and  chain  was  used  for  the  first  time. 
The  industrial  problem  became  increasingly  complicated  at  the 
prison.  Various  industries  were  tried :  Nailmaking,  weaving,  black- 
smithing,  shoemaking,  etc.  In  December,  1808,  the  agent  adver- 
tised that  he  had  on  hand  a  large  quantity  of  nails,  log  chains, 
drawing  chains,  pole  irons,  axes,  hoes,  tinware,  copper  ware,  shoes, 
boots,  etc. 

'*all  of  which  he  offers  at  the  most  reduced  prices  for  cash,  or  for  the  follow- 
ing kinds  of  produce,  to  wit:  whiskey,  brandy,  cider,  lacure,  pork,  bacon, 
hams  and  hog's  lard,  to  be  delivered  in  Frankfort.'' 

The  prison  found  it  very  hard,  on  the  one  hand,  to  get  raw 
material  like  iron  and  coal  from  Pittsburg  and  elsewhere,  and  on 
the  other  hand  to  find  a  market  for  its  products.  The  Legislature 
authorized  the  sale  of  products  at  any  point  on  the  Ohio  or  Missis- 
sippi Rivers.  The  agent  of  the  prison  might  contract  with  any 
supercargo  or  shipper  to  take  on  freight  cargoes  to  such  points, 
taking  a  receipt  or  bond  for  the  faithful  discharge  of  duty.  The 
returns  from  the  sales  were  to  be  made  within  six  months,  and  the 
agent  was  to  pay  the  net  proceeds  into  the  public  treasury.  After 
September,  1810,  the  prison  was  to  receive  no  further  appropria- 
tions from  the  State,  and  must  subsist  from  the  labor  of  the 
prisoners.  The  agent  was  to  receive  ten  per  cent,  commission  from 
the  sales. 

This  plan  opened  up  a  direct  road  to  the  most  embarrassing 
results.  The  prison  administration  was  forced,  in  order  to  get 
money  to  run  the  prison,  to  sell  its  goods.  A  market,  often  far 
distant,  had  to  be  sought.  Nail  making,  which  at  first  had  appeared 
to  be  a  good  industry,  soon  found  in  New  Orleans  a  successful 
competitor.  Long  chances  were  taken  with  customers  whose  credit 
was  doubtful.  In  a  land  that  was  still  a  frontier,  the  age  was  one 
of  barter.  In  1811  and  1812,  outstanding  dues  to  the  prison 
amounted  to  about  $13,000.  Long-time  credit  was  given.  Money 
to  buy  raw  material  for  the  prison  was  often  lacking.  In  1813,  the 
State  advanced  $5,000  to  buy  nail-iron.  There  was  no  other  prison 
of  the  kind  west  of  the  AUeghanies,  none  nearer  than  Virginia  and 
Philadelphia.  The  problems  of  industrial  management  in  prisons 
were  new,  and  without  clear  precedents. 

In  1815,  a  new  method  was  tried.  The  keeper  was  to  have  full 
charge  of  the  prison,  and  render  an  account  every  three  months 
to  the  State  auditor.  The  keeper  was  empowered  to  make  contracts 
and  collect  debts.  He  was  to  have  ten  per  cent,  commission  on  all 
articles,  when  sold  and  paid  for.  The  attitude  of  the  Legislature 
was  clearly  that  of  handing  over  a  troublesome  problem  to  the 
keeper  for  solution,  and  telling  him  to  run  the  prison  the  best  way 
he  could.  The  finances  became  with  each  year  more  involved. 
The  office  of  industrial  agent  was  created.  The  Legislature  ques- 
tioned why,  with  the  convicts  working  ceaselessly,  the  Penitentiary 
did  not  pay  a  profit.  In  1823,  the  Legislature  found  the  institution 
very  unprofitable,  and  the  prices  of  articles  too  high. 


History  of  American  Prisons  257 

There  was  talk  now  of  abandoning  the  Penitentiary  and  restoring 
the  earlier  sanguinary  laws.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  this  movement 
was  practically  contemporaneous  with  the  agitation  in  the  Eastern 
States  to  have  a  new  prison  system,  or  else  revert  to  ancient 
methods.  In  1825,  the  Legislature  made  a  radical  departure,  and 
handed  the  prison  over  bodily  to  the  newly  appointed  keeper,  Joel 
Scott,  who  continued  in  office  until  1832.  He  was  to  employ  the 
convicts  at  hard  labor,  treat  them  humanely,  pay  the  State  half  of 
the  net  profits  accruing  from  the  labor  of  the  convicts,  and  keep  the 
other  half  of  the  net  profits  in  lieu  of  salary.  He  was  to  maintain 
the  prisoners,  and  also  defray  all  other  expenses  except  buildings. 
The  State  was  at  no  time  to  receive  less  than  $1,000  a  year  from 
the  keeper. 

This  procedure  meant  literally  the  wholesale  leasing  of  the  prison 
and  its  population  to  one  man.  Labor,  rent,  equipment,  plants 
heat  —  all  were  delivered  over  to  Scott.  The  State  was  weary  of 
the  long  years  of  unprofitable  prison  management.  No  other  suc- 
cessful prisons  were  in  sight,  to  suggest  any  other  plan.  These 
were  the  very  years  when  the  prisons  in  Philadelphia,  New  York 
and  Boston  were  heavy  charges  upon  the  State.  In  those  cities 
also,  there  was,  as  we  have  said,  strong  agitation  to  give  up  the 
existing  penitentiary  systems  and  revert  to  the  barbarous  corporal 
and  capital  punishments  that  the  penitentiary  systems  had  replaced. 

Kentucky  was  watching  the  progress  of  prison  matters  in  the 
East.  An  enlightened  statement  was  made  by  Governor  Adair  to 
the  Legislature  in  1821,  that  the  prominent  defects  in  the  Kentucky 
system  were  the  omission  of  solitary  confinement,  the  lack  of  any 
general  instruction  of  prisoners,  the  absence  of  all  rewards  of 
merit  to  the  convicts,  and  the  neglect  of  the  State  to  furnish  any 
suitable  provision  for  prisoners  on  discharge.  The  Governor  urged 
absolute  and  compulsory  solitude  of  prisoners  as  both  punitive  and 
reformative.  Prisoners  should  be  taught  reading,  writing  and 
arithmetic.  Rewards  should  be  offered  that  would  bring  to  the 
worthy  prisoners  both  exemptions  and  distinctions,  and  would  also 
shorten  the  time  of  confinement  and  service.  The  convict  should  on 
departure  receive  a  part  of  his  earnings.  The  penitentiary  system 
should  not  be  abandoned;  it  was  not  a  money-making  or  money- 
earning  project,  but  a  magnificent  plan. 

We  have  not  found  evidence  that  the  State  met  Governor  Adair 's 
recommendations,  except  in  the  matter  of  erecting  an  additional 
prison  building  during  Scott's  administration.  The  chief  interest 
was  that  the  prison  should  cease  to  be  a  financial  burden  to  the 
State.  To  protect  the  prisoners  against  the  desperate  treatment 
that  such  wholesale  leasing  might  easily  bring  with  it,  a  board  of 
visitors  —  the  earliest  supervisory  body  we  have  noted  in  any  State 
—  was  appointed,  consisting  of  the  Auditor,  Treasurer,  Registrar 
and  Attorney  General,  all  State  officials. 

This  board  was  required  by  law  to  visit  the  prison  at  least  once  a 
month,  examine  the  state  of  the  institution,  note  the  health  of 
the  convicts,  their  dietary,  cleanliness  and  treatment  generally. 


258  History  of  American  Prisons 

They  were  obligated  to  report  to  each  successive  Legislature  their 
opinion  as  to  the  management  and  government  of  the  prison.  In 
practice  this  intended  check  on  the  administration  of  the  keeper 
was  neglected,  only  three  reports  being  made  to  the  Legislature 
in  later  years.  Sneed,  the  chronicler  of  the  history  from  which  the 
details  of  this  account  have  been  taken,  states,  however,  that  Keeper 
Scott  was  a  man  of  integrity,  and  allows  it  to  be  inferred  that  the 
prison  was  properly  administered. 

The  financial  troubles  of  the  State  were  now  largely  past.  By 
1827  the  Penitentiary  had  ceased  to  be  an  annual  burden.  New 
industries  and  machinery  had  been  introduced.  The  keeper  found 
no  difficulty  in  vending  his  products.  Unquestionably,  there  was 
long,  hard,  daily  toil  at  the  prison.  By  1830,  the  average  popula- 
tion numbered  100.  The  men  worked  from  sun  to  sun,  save  for 
meals.  Shoemakers  worked  until  9  or  10  o'clock  at  night  in 
the  winter.  There  were  two  meals  in  the  winter  and  three  in  the 
summer. 

Scott  studied  the  annual  reports  of  the  Prison  Discipline  Society 
of  Boston.  He  advocated  the  principles  of  the  then  noted  Auburn 
system.  He  furthered  divine  service  at  the  prison,  and  in  1829 
the  Legislature  appropriated  its  first  money  for  moral  and  religious 
instruction,  not  to  exceed  $250  per  annum,  for  a  chaplain  to  con- 
duct religious  services  and  to  teach.  A  chapel  and  school  room 
were  built.  There  was  as  yet  no  hospital.  Corporal  punishment 
was  almost  entirely  dispensed  with.  Scott's  health  was  declining, 
and  he  refused  reappointment  as  keeper  in  1832.  How  much  Scott 
made  for  himself  during  his  incumbency  as  keeper  is  unclear. 
Apparently,  the  total  net  profits  were  $81,136,  of  which  Scott  would 
receive  half.  Unquestionably,  the  position  had  now  become  a 
lucrative  one. 

Thomas  S.  Theobald  succeeded  Scott  as  keeper  in  1832.  His 
administration  was  characterized  by  great  industrial  activity.  New 
workshops  were  built  in  1835,  providing  also  a  large  chapel,  school 
room,  hospital  and  mess  hall.  A  new  prison  building,  to  contain 
250  cells,  was  projected  and  completed  in  184...  The  prison  popula- 
tion in  1847  numbered  114,  distributed  as  follows  as  to  age : 

15  to  20  years H      50  to  60  years 16 

20  to  30  years 58      60  to  70  years 1 

30  to  40  years 35                                                                  

40  to  50  years 13           Total  124 

A  Legislative  committee  in  1839  found  that  the  profits  of  the 
prison  for  nine  months  had  been  $15,030,  of  which  $7,515  was  the 
State's  share.  The  State  was,  however,  standing  half  of  the  expense 
of  erecting  new  buildings.  Profits  from  March  1st,  1839,  to  Novem- 
ber 30,  1840,  amounted  to  $42,512.  A  Legislative  committee 
reported  the  whole  prison  to  be  a  scene  of  activity,  the  workshops 
clean  and  healthy,  the  health  of  the  convicts  good.  They  were 
reported  to  be  well  clothed,  comparatively  happy,  and  kindly 
treated,  although  in  many  instances  corporal  chastisement  was 
necessary. 


History  of  American  Prisons 


259 


The  average  number  of  convicts  at  the  prison  increased  rapidly. 
For  the  four  years  ending  in  1843,  the  average  population  had  been 
about  160.  The  real  profits  for  three  years  and  nine  months  had 
been,  in  1,400  days,  $62,641.  Each  convict  paid  the  State,  over  and 
above  all  expenses,  28%  cents  per  day.  A  Legislative  report  for 
1843  republished  the  following  table  from  the  Prison  Discipline 
Society 's  report : 

Tabular  View  of  Nine  Penitentiaries 


No.  of  prisoners 
beginning  of  year 

No.  of  prisoners 
end  of  year 

Expenses  over 
earnings 

Earnings  over 
expenses 

78 
322 

14 
695 
827 
329 
205 
483 
162 

74 
331 

21 
717 
811 
284 
214 
480 
162 

$460.62 

Massachusetts 

Jl, 015.92 
6,548.86 

Rhode  Island 

17,706.76 

Sing  Sing 

9,640  10 

6,493.13 

Connecticut 

8,065  29 

Ohio 

21,897.32 

KENTUCKY 

29,859.52 

The  Legislative  committee  made  the  point  that  Kentucky,  with 
fewer  convicts  than  Ohio,  was  making  more  money  than  any  other 
State. 

And  so  the  committee  waxed  generous!  As  an  "echo  of  an 
enlightened  and  benevolent  sentiment,"  and  as  showing  Kentucky 
to  be  merciful  and  not  cruel,  the  committee  recommended  that  in 
addition  to  the  sum  of  five  dollars  which  the  State  gave  the  prisoner 
on  discharge,  he  also  be  given  a  suit  of  clothes! 

The  earnings  from  March  1,  1839,  to  November  30,  1842,  were 
$100,494,  of  which  the  State  received  its  share.  Small  wonder  that 
when  in  1844,  it  came  time  for  the  Legislature  to  appoint  a  new 
keeper,  there  was  most  intense  political  activity.  The  award  of  the 
highly  lucrative  position  was  made  to  a  firm,  Craig  and  Henry  by 
name. 

Just  at  the  close  of  this  period  occur  the  first  echoes  of  discon- 
tent among  the  mechanics  of  the  State  at  the  competition  of 
prison  labor.  A  legislative  committee  recommended  in  1844  that 
in  view  thereof,  the  manufacture  of  rope  and  bagging,  non-competi- 
tive industries,  be  extended  to  employ  as  nearly  as  possible  all 
prisoners. 

The  foregoing  account,  gathered  from  the  exhaustive  account 
of  Sneed,  portrays  a  prison  that  was  seemingly  without  effect  or 
infiuence  upon  the  prison  reform  movements  of  the  time,  and  which, 
far  removed  from  the  Eastern  centers,  went  on  its  way,  developing 
its  own  methods  of  administration  and  financial  management, 
barkening  to  the  developments  in  the  East,  but  without  reciprocal 
relations  with  the  Eastern  prison  boards  of  executives.  It  is  an 
instance  of  a  prison  in  a  frontier  land,  discovering  a  successful 
financial  method,  and  utilizing  methods  of  lease  and  of  administra- 
tion discovered  in  no  Eastern  State  in  the  same  period. 


CHAPTER  XXI 


OTHER   EARLY   AMERICAN    PRISONS* 

1 
OHIO 

Numerous  prisons  were  established  in  this  country,  or  recon- 
structed, during  the  period  of  the  gro^vth  of  the  Auburn  and  the 
Pennsylvania  systems  of  prison  administration,  but  in  the  foregoing 
chapters  we  have  given  detailed  attention  to  those  which  seemed 
to  play  the  more  important  or  essential  parts  in  the  development 
of  an  American  penology.  The  prisons  we  are  now  about  to 
describe  failed  to  wield  noteworthy  influence  in  the  development  of 
prison  methods  in  States  other  than  their  own.  Yet  in  each  State 
we  find  certain  developments  not  only  essential  to  chronicle,  but 
also  of  interest  to  the  student. 

Ohio 's  State  prison  became  after  its  transformation  into  a  prison 
of  the  Auburn  type  an  exceptionally  noteworthy  money-maker 
for  the  State  —  and  this  is  its  chief  characteristic  in  this  period. 
The  first  State  prison  in  Ohio  was  erected  in  Columbus,  the  capitol 
of  the  State,  in  1816.  It  was  an  insecure,  illy  constructed  edifice, 
calculated  originally  for  only  30  prisoners,  and  it  stood  on  elevated 
ground,  back  of  the  Scioto  River.  The  surface  of  the  ground  about 
the  prison  was  so  uneven  in  places  that  convicts  could  evade  at 
times  the  observation  of  the  guards.  The  prison  was  on  the  conven- 
tional type,  with  large  rooms.  There  was  a  wall,  400  feet  long,  150 
feet  wide,  and  14  feet  high,  enclosing  the  yard  of  the  prison.  The 
cell  buildings  were  on  the  northern  side  of  the  wall. 

Through  the  prison  building  ran  a  central  passageway.  The 
prison  building  itself  was  150  feet  long,  30  feet  wide  and  2  stories 
high.  The  passageway  was  eight  feet  wide,  and  the  sleeping  cells 
were  on  each  side,  vis  a  vis,  and  having  grated  doors.  The  prisoners 
could  thus  communicate  with  each  other  when  locked  up  at  night. 
When  Crawford  visited  the  prison  in  1832,  he  found  5  cells  occu- 
pied, each  of  the  dimensions  of  9  feet  by  7.  At  one  end  of  the 
building  were  the  kitchen  and  dining  hall,  and  over  the  kitchen 
was  the  hospital,  a  room  30  by  16  feet,  also  used  as  a  workroom  for 
the  shoemakers  and  the  tailors. 

The  basement  contained  several  cells  for  solitary  confinement, 
8  feet  by  6  feet  in  size.  The  walls  were  of  stone,  lined  with  plank. 
These  cells  were  quite  dark,  and  were  entered  by  a  trap  door  from 
the  ground  floor  above.  The  convicts  were  confined  therein  for 
short  periods,  according  to  the  sentence  of  the  court.  The  work- 
shops of  the  old  prison  were  small  and  badly  arranged.    There  was 

*  Chapter  unfinished  because  of  author 's  death. 

[260] 


History  of  American  Prisons  261 

a  close  association  of  the  convicts  with  each  other,  without  super- 
vision. Owing  to  want  of  room,  at  the  time  of  Crawford's  visit, 
only  75  prisoners  could  be  employed  in  the  workshops,  and  the  rest 
were  shut  up  in  their  cells.  The  output  had  not  been  productive, 
and  the  prison  was  being  run  at  a  considerable  loss. 

At  Crawford's,  first  visit,  there  were  190  convicts,  made  up  of 
163  white  men  and  20  colored  men,  4  white  women  and  3  colored 
women.  On  a  subsequent  visit  he  found  203  prisoners,  of  whom 
114  were  employed  in  working  on  the  construction  of  the  new  peni- 
tentiary, also  in  making  bricks  a  half  mile  away  from  the  old 
penitentiary.  Whenever  the  convicts  exceeded  the  number  of  120, 
the  governor  of  the  State  was  forced  to  grant  pardons  in  order  to 
create  room  in  the  prison  for  the  newcomers. 

Sentences  to  the  penitentiary  were  at  this  time  (1832)  not  actu- 
ally exceeding  generally  21  months.  Several  persons  were  found 
sentenced  for  life.  The  prisoners  associated  with  each  other  at 
meal  times,  and  their  moral  and  religious  welfare  was  totally 
neglected.  Much  of  the  time  of  the  prisoners  was  passed  in  mutual 
contamination  and  in  plots  to  escape.  The  officers  of  the  prison 
seldom  were  sure  of  the  safety  of  their  own  lives.  The  Legislature 
of  1831  branded  the  prison  in  the  official  statement  that 

**a  more  perfect  system  for  the  dissemination  of  vice  could  not  be  devised 
than  is  to  be  found  within  the  walls  of  the  Ohio  penitentiary." 

Crawford  reported  that  the  State  had  purchased  a  plot  of  land 
of  some  eight  acres  in  Franklinton,  not  far  distant  from  the  old 
prison,  and  contiguous  to  extensive  beds  of  limestone.  The  build- 
ing was  in  process  of  erection  at  the  time  of  his  visits.  It  was  to 
contain  700  cells.  This  new  prison,  on  the  Auburn  plan,  was 
expected  to  solve  the  same  grievous  problems  of  prison  malad- 
ministration that  had  affected  other  States. 

The  old  prison  had  a  keeper  as  the  only  responsible  officer.  The 
keeper  appointed  all  deputies,  the  clerk,  the  guards  and  the  phy- 
sician. He  paid  such  compensation  as  he  deemed  reasonable,  except 
to  the  clerk,  who  received  $400  per  annum  and  the  physician,  who 
received  $250  per  annum.  The  deputy  keeper  received  $400. 
There  were  three  overseers  in  the  shops,  and  a  doorkeeper,  who 
received  $300,  and  3  men  on  the  walls  received  $264  each  per 
annum.  The  keeper  was  elected  annually  by  the  Legislature  and 
received  $1,000.  He  made  all  purchases,  sold  all  manufactured 
articles,  paid  all  expenses  and  made  a  quarterly  statement  to  the 
State  auditor,  and  an  annual  report  to  the  Legislature. 

Two-thirds  of  the  inmates  were  convicted  of  horse  stealing,  lar- 
ceny or  burglary.  The  Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society,  reporting 
on  this  prison  in  1827,  gave  five  sentences  as  for  life,  several  for 
15  or  even  20  years,  and  no  sentences  of  less  than  3  years.  Two- 
thirds  of  the  total  number  of  sentences  were  for  3  years.  In  the 
old  prison  there  was  no  classification,  and  in  winter  there  were  four 
men  in  a  room,  in  summer  three.  There  was  no  method  of  warming 
the  sleeping  rooms  in  winter.    Of  moral  instruction  there  was  little, 


262  History  of  American  Prisons 

there  being  only  occasional  preaching.  The  principal  evils  of  the 
old  prison  were,  the  faulty  construction,  the  unusual  proportion  of 
sickness  in  the  hospital,  the  want  of  instruction,  and  the  gruesome 
cells  for  solitary  confinement. 

In  1828  a  chaplain  was  appointed,  named  James  Chute,  at  a 
salary  of  $30  a  month,  which  was  raised  out  of  the  personal 
subscriptions  of  the  ministers  of  the  synod  of  the  Presbyterian 
Church  of  the  region.  Reformation  was  increasingly  recognized 
as  practically  impossible  under  the  old  system  —  the  keeper  sent 
to  Boston  for  the  annual  reports  of  the  Prison  Discipline  Society, 
the  Legislature  discussed  the  prison  repeatedly,  a  fire  in  1831 
destroyed  nearly  all  of  the  shops  and  was  probably  incendiary, 
the  governor's  message  in  1832  was  one  of  general  condemnation 
of  the  prison,  and  the  chaplain  resigned.  An  instance  of  the 
primitive  conditions  of  the  prison  was  evidenced  in  the  fact  that 
at  this  period  the  women  prisoners  were  all  kept  in  one  large  room, 
partly  underground.  There  was  no  chapel  and  no  assembly  place 
in  the  prison.  The  prison  was  designated  as  a  ''sinking  fund"  of 
$10,000  per  annum. 

The  new  prison  was  carefully  planned.  There  was  to  be  a  south 
front  of  400  feet,  to  be  occupied,  in  the  center,  by  the  keeper  and 
his  family,  from  which  building  there  was  a  general  entrance  by  a 
hall,  12  feet  wide,  to  the  guard  room.  Beyond  was  another  passage, 
having  on  each  side,  entrances  to  the  wing  building  that  contained 
the  cells.  In  the  guard  room  were  inspection  apertures  to  com- 
mand a  view  of  the  long  passages  in  front  of  the  cells.  There  was 
a  double  range  of  cells,  back  to  back,  and  an  area  of  11  feet  sur- 
rounding the  cells.  Each  wing  was  to  contain  70  cells,  and  to  be 
of  five  stories.  The  cells  were  7  feet  by  3.6  feet  by  7  feet.  When 
built,  they  were  found  to  be  deficient  in  ventilation. 

The  prison  for  women  was  detached,  and  in  the  rear,  a  double 
range  of  cells,  24  in  number.  The  upper  floors  of  this  building 
formed  a  hospital.  There  was  an  airing  yard  for  the  women's 
prison.  The  workshops  were  in  a  separate  long  range  of  buildings. 
At  the  back,  the  prison  yard  was  400  feet  square,  and  a  boundary 
wall  of  25  feet  in  height,  and  3  feet  in  thickness,  was  the  barrier 
from  the  outside  world. 

In  October,  1834,  189  convicts  were  moved  from  the  old  to  the 
new  penitentiary.  At  this  time,  $47,532.25  had  been  drawn  from 
the  State  treasury  for  the  cost  of  the  prison,  and  $30,000  more  was 
to  be  asked  for.  A  Mr.  Medberry  was  appointed  warden.  In  1837 
it  was  reported  that  the  convicts  were  used  not  only  for  the 
construction  of  the  new  prison,  but  for  the  State  Lunatic  Asylum 
at  Columbus.  Their  labor  value  was  estimated  at  fifty  cents  per 
day.    There  was  still  no  chaplain  and  the  death  rate  was  high. 

The  Prison  Discipline  Society  of  Boston,  persistently  campaign- 
ing against  the  neglect  of  the  Lord 's  Day  by  the  continued  omission 
of  church  services  and  a  Sunday  School,  emphasized  in  its  annual 


History  op  American  Prisons  263 

report  of  1837  that  the  solitary  cell  of  a  prison  was  a  deadly  place 
in  which  to  put  a  man  in  to  spend  his  Sabbaths : 

"Legislators  of  Ohio  —  ye  fathers,  ye  brothers,  ye  sons  —  will  you  place 
men,  sustaining  these  relations,  week  after  week,  month  after  month,  and 
year  after  year,  in  solitary  cells  to  spend  their  Sabbaths?  Will  you  place 
mothers,  sisters,  daughters  in  solitary  cells  to  spend  their  Sabbaths?  Will 
you  do  it?  If  you  will,  may  the  Almighty  avert  from  you  the  dreadful 
affliction  of  having  members  of  your  own  families  placed  in  these  circum- 
stances! May  you  never  know  by  your  own  experience,  what  it  is!  May  you 
never  be  driven  to  suicide  by  it!  May  you  never  have  your  flesh  and  blood 
dried  up  by  the  slow  and  consuming  effects  of  unmitigated  solitude  and 
despair !  ' ' 

However,  the  prison  began  to  delight  the  Legislature  from  the 
financial  side.  In  1837  the  earnings  were  good.  In  1838  the  Prison 
Discipline  Society  condemned  the  State  for  earning  $20,000  from 
the  work  of  the  convicts,  but  giving  them  no  Sunday  suit ! 

"There  ought  to  be  a  rebellion  in  society  against  all  prisons  where  convict 
labor  is  more  than  sufficient  to  defray  all  expenses,  if  the  prisoners  are  com- 
pelled to  spend  their  Sabbaths  and  go  to  meeting  in  their  dirty  clothes! 
Where  is  the  flesh  in  man's  heart?" 

Nevertheless,  the  prison  went  on  profiting  extensively  by  the 
labor  of  its  inmates,  and  by  1840  had  established  a  special  reputa- 
tion as  a  productive  factory.  Competent  judges,  after  visiting  it, 
and  comparing  it  with  other  penitentiaries,  declared  it  inferior  to 
none.  In  1841  the  prison  made  $21,897,  leading  all  American 
prisons  in  earnings.  The  State  penitentiary  at  Frankfort,  Ken- 
tucky, was  second  in  this  year. 

In  1843-44,  Gerrish  Barrett,  representing  the  Prison  Discipline 
Society,  made  an  extended  tour  of  the  central  States,  and  visited 
the  Ohio  prison.  He  found  350  cells,  operated  on  the  Auburn  plan, 
in  five  stories,  well  warmed  by  6  stoves,  and  well  lighted  by  2  tiers 
of  windows.  The  female  apartment  contained  36  cells,  and  only  9 
inmates  —  6  white  and  3  black.  There  were  500  men  under  proper 
discipline  and  hardly  giving,  according  to  Barrett,  as  much  trouble 
as  the  few  women: 

"The  women  fight,  scratch,  pull  hair,  curse,  swear  and  yell,  and  to  bring 
them  to  order  a  keeper  has  frequently  to  go  among  them  with  a  horsewhip. 
.     .     .     One  of  the  best  planned  hospitals  that  I  ever  saw  is  in  this  prison. ' ' 

In  the  year  ending  November  30,  1842,  137  prisoners  were 
received.  There  were  in  that  year  78  discharges  by  expiration  of 
sentence,  and  66  by  pardon.  No  one  was  sentenced  to  the  prison 
for  less  than  one  year.  In  the  last  year  there  had  been  a  net  gain 
of  $28,794,  of  which  $945  came  from  the  admission  of  visitors. 
There  was  in  the  prison  no  library,  nor  teacher,  or  chapel. 

Mr.  Barrett  preached  at  the  prison.  The  day  was  cold  and  the 
room  used  as  chapel  was  twice  as  large  as  need  be.  There  were  two 
outside  doors,  left  wide  open,  that  let  in  a  constant  current  of 
fresh  winter  air.  A  small  stove  in  the  middle  of  the  room  scarcely 
made  a  perceptible  change  in  the  atmosphere.  The  prisoners  were 
thinly  clad,  and  sat  on  loose  benches  without  backs.  Meanwhile, 
Mr.  Barrett,  with  overshoes  and  wadded  surtout,  shivered  with  the 
cold. 


264  History  of  American  Prisons 


WASHINGTON,  DISTRICT  OF  COLUMBIA 

A  prison,  to  take  the  place  of  the  old  jail  in  the  city  of  Washing- 
ton, was  contemplated  as  early  as  182...  The  prison  was  erected 
in  1827  and  1828,  and  was  on  a  point  of  land  projecting  into  the 
Potomac,  almost  south  of  the  Capitol,  and  in  the  direction  of 
Alexandria.  The  principal  building  was  of  brick,  on  the  Auburn 
plan,  120  feet  long,  50  feet  w4de,  36  feet  high,  and  contained  160 
cells  in  4  stories.  There  were  also  two  buildings,  one  on  each  flank 
of  the  prison,  having  communication  with  it  by  a  small  door  on  a 
level  with  the  first  gallery.  These  buildings  were  25  by  40  feet, 
containing  cellars,  two  upright  stories,  and  lodging  rooms  in  the 
roof.  One  building  was  devoted  to  the  keeper,  his  deputies  and 
his  family,  and  the  other  to  the  kitchen,  the  hospital,  and  other 
purposes.  A  wall,  75  feet  in  advance  of  the  front,  and  20  feet  high, 
enclosed  an  area  300  feet  square.  The  design  of  the  prison  was  the 
result  of  a  visit  by  Charles  Bulfinch  in  1826,  while  architect  of  the 
public  buildings  at  Washington,  to  other  penitentiaries,  for  sugges- 
tions relative  to  the  new  prison  at  Washington.  He  favored  the 
Auburn  plan. 

The  cells  of  the  prison  were  7  feet  11  inches  long,  3  feet  4  inches 
wide,  and  7  feet  9  inches  high.  The  cells  were  warmed  with  stoves 
in  the  area,  similar  to  the  method  at  Sing  Sing.  The  windows  in 
the  outside  walls  were  large. 

The  prisoners  worked  in  association  in  the  daytime,  and  in 
silence  from  sun-up  to  sun-down.  If  they  finished  their  work  early, 
they  might  read  the  scriptures,  and  also  religious  tracts.  Silence 
was  strictly  preserved  in  the  cells  at  night.  On  discharge  from  the 
prison,  the  inmates  were  furnished  with  a  garb  suitable  for  a 
laborer,  and  money  sufficient  to  bear  their  expenses  home.  The 
warden  found  a  ready  market  for  all  the  articles  manufactured  in 
the  prison.  At  the  time  of  Crawford's  visit  in  1831,  there  were 
46  male  convicts  employed,  among  whom  were  25  engaged  at  shoe- 
making,  8  at  oakum  picking,  2  at  tailoring,  2  at  carpentering,  one 
at  plastering. 

The  punishments  for  being  idle  and  for  conversation  were,  being 
placed  in  the  stocks,  and  in  solitary  confinement  in  cells,  but  not 
in  darkness.  The  restricted  diet  of  bread  and  water  was  a  part  of 
the  punishment,  and  the  period  was  not  to  exceed  20  days. 

The  discipline  was  not  strict,  and  the  agent  petitioned  in  1832 
for  the  use  of  the  whip.  The  warden  was  found  by  Crawford  to 
be  warmly  interested  in  the  moral  welfare  of  those  committed  to 
his  charge.  The  board  of  control  of  the  prison  was  made  up  of 
three  inspectors,  who  visited  the  prison  weekly.  The  warden  was 
not  to  be  present  at  that  time  unless  required  by  the  inspectors. 

Several  years  later,  in  1835,  De  Metz  and  Blouet  visited  the 
penitentiary,  and  reported  an  exaggerated  solicitude  on  the  part  of 
the  warden  for  his  prisoners.  There  were  services  on  Sunday,  and 
a  school  for  those  who  could  not  read.  The  discipline  was  found  to 
be  relaxed.    Indeed,  some  prisoners  asked  the  warden  to  keep  them 


History  of  American  Prisons  265 

at  the  prison  after  they  had  finished  their  terms.  The  warden,  an 
opponent  of  the  Auburn  system,  because  of  the  necessity  of  keeping 
up  rigid  discipline,  was  a  believer  in  the  Pennsylvania  system  of 
separate  confinement. 

The  Reverend  Gerrish  Barrett,  representing  the  Prison  Discipline 
Society  of  Boston,  visited  the  prison  in  1842.  He  found  it  admir- 
able in  construction  and  a  model  of  neatness,  with  no  vermin,  and 
no  impure  air.  There  was  not  an  invalid  in  the  hospital.  There 
were  80  prisoners,  the  chief  occupation  being  shoemaking.  Pun- 
ishments were  mild.  The  prison  ran  behindhand  regular  in  the 
operation  of  the  industries. 

This  prison,  at  the  nation's  capital,  went  through  the  storm-and- 
stress  period  of  American  penology  without  seemingly  having  any 
influence  upon  it.  Small,  mild  in  discipline,  conducting  a  regime 
that  set  a  remarkable  health  record,  the  prison  was  nevertheless 
inconspicuous  and  offers  nothing  to  the  student  of  the  currents  of 
American  penology. 

3. 

GEORGIA 

The  State  penitentiary  of  Georgia  emerges,  in  the  reports  of 
the  Prison  Discipline  Society  of  Boston,  from  obscurity  in  1827, 
only  to  be  mentioned  as  threatened  with  abandonment  by  the 
Legislature  of  the  State  on  the  ground  that  it  was  not  fulfilling 
the  mission  for  which  it  was  organized  in  1817.  Like  the  other 
prisons  of  the  period,  it  was  constructed  on  the  old  and  traditional 
plan  of  large  night-rooms,  but  by  1830  the  system  had  become 
so  unpopular  that  the  Legislature  abolished  the  prison  by  an 
overwhelming  majority. 

The  institution  had  been  a  tax  of  several  thousand  dollars  a 
year  to  the  State.  Rigid  discipline,  effected  by  means  of  the  *'cow 
skin, ' '  the  ' '  slue  paddle, ' '  the  '  ^  wooden  horse, ' '  and  confinement  in 
a  dungeon,  had  not  brought  forth  industrial  efficiency. 

But,  in  January,  1832,  a  Colonel  Mills  was  asked  to  take  charge 
of  the  Penitentiary.  He  found  88  convicts,  ' '  mostly  reduced  to  the 
lowest  depths  of  degradation  and  perfect  misanthropes. ' '  He  pitied 
the  group,  sought  to  raise  them  from  their  degradation,  and  planned 
to  use  in  the  process  mainly  moral  influences.  He  instituted  what 
was  exceedingly  rare,  if  not  unique  in  this  period,  a  system  of 
rewards  and  punishments,  and  we  find  that  the  privileges  of  the 
yard  were  given  on  the  Sabbath  to  such  as  merited  the  same,  on 
account  of  good  conduct,  and  also  the  privilege  of  working  for 
themselves  during  the  time  allowed  for  dinner,  which  was  ninety 
minutes. 

None  of  the  prisons  discussed  as  being  in  the  midst  of  the  currents 
of  prison  development  in  this  period  had  instituted  such  radical 
innovation  —  one  that  even  in  the  present  period  of  American 
penology  is  still  approached  with  doubt  by  not  a  few  wardens  of 
State  prisons.  The  freedom  of  the  yard  on  Sundays  is  in  this  year 
of  1922  enjoyed  in  many  prisons,  but  even  as  late  as  1910,  there 
could  not  be  found  traces  of  it  in  most  eastern  prisons. 


266  History  of  American  Prisons 

Colonel  Mills  was  equally  forceful  in  his  plan  of  punishments. 
He  used  the  stocks,  which  was  unusual,  and  also  cellular  confine- 
ment and  restricted  diet  of  bread  and  water  until  the  offending 
inmate  was  humbled.  He  was  always  careful  not  to  punish  until 
there  were  thorough  grounds  therefor.  Convicts  who  had  been 
found  by  Mills  on  his  arrival  as  warden  wearing  heavy  clogs  were 
released  and  put  on  good  behavior,  and  it  was  reported  by  him  that 
he  never  had  to  punish  one  of  them  in  summary  manner  for 
misconduct  thereafter. 

Before  the  coming  of  Mills,  missionaries  working  in  the  prison 
had  declared  the  situation  hopeless;  that  the  prison  ''was  no  place 
to  get  religion."  With  the  coming  of  Mills,  a  great  religious 
reformation  movement  took  place.  Preaching  was  not  only  toler- 
ated, but  requested,  and  a  Bible  class  of  considerable  size  was 
formed.  Nor  was  the  industrial  end  of  the  institution  less  devel- 
oped. The  business  of  the  prison  was  greatly  augmented,  and  net 
annual  gains  of  several  thousand  dollars  were  reported.  All  the 
convicts  were  organized  into  a  Sunday  School.  Clergymen  came 
into  the  prison  from  the  outside  to  preach.  Mr.  Mills'  policy  was 
as  follows: 

**The  superintendent  of  a  penitentiary  should  be  a  monarch,  but  not  a 
tyrant.  It  is  an  easy  matter  to  drive  men  to  degradation  by  undue  severity; 
there  are  very  few  that  would  bear  the  lash,  without  destroying  that  self- 
respect  which  is  all-important  to  moral  reformation." 

The  death  rate  of  the  prison  was  extremely  low.  There  was  no 
death  among  the  officers,  guards  or  convicts  from  the  10th  of 
April,  1831,  to  the  28th  of  April,  1834.    Nor  was  there  any  escape. 

In  1841,  the  Reverend  Gerrish  Barrett  visited  on  his  travels 
this  prison.  He  described  it  as  in  the  suburbs  of  Milledgeville, 
the  capital  of  the  State,  on  ground  that  was  too  low.  It  had  150 
cells,  occupied  by  160  prisoners,  among  whom  were  4  white  women 
and  one  mulatto.  The  cells  were  on  the  Baltimore  prison  plan,  but 
smaller.  The  spaces  between  the  tiers  of  cells  were  entirely  floored 
over.  The  cell  doors  were  of  wood,  without  any  grating,  and 
fastened  with  a  padlock. 

The  chief  industries  of  the  prison  were  shoemaking,  harness 
making,  and  wagon  making.  The  prison  did  not  support  itself.  No 
ardent  spirits  and  no  tobacco  were  allowed.  Thirty  of  the  160 
prisoners  could  not  read  and  52  could  not  write.  There  was  no 
one  save  their  fellow  convicts  to  teach  the  ignorant  to  read.  There 
was  preaching  once  a  week  from  a  minister  from  the  town,  who 
received  $150  annually  for  his  services.  There  was  no  flogging  in 
the  prison,  but  the  paddle  was  used.  The  paddle  consisted  of  a 
piece  of  wood,  4  feet  long,  and  2  or  3  inches  in  diameter ;  one  end 
of  the  paddle  was  wider  than  the  rest,  flattened,  and  was  filled  with 
holes.  With  the  flat  end,  from  5  to  30  blows  would  be  applied  to 
the  bare  skin  of  a  prisoner,  while  he  was  held  over  a  block  or  a 
barrel. 

The  wall  about  the  prison  was  of  brick,  too  low,  and  so  weak 
that  the  keeper  stated  that  a  man  could  dig  through  it  with  a 
shoe  knife  in  a  few  minutes. 


History  of  American  Prisons  267 

4. 

TENNESSEE 

In  the  session  of  1830,  the  Legislature  of  Tennessee  passed  a  law 
authorizing  the  construction  of  a  penitentiary.  Three  commission- 
ers together  with  the  governor  of  the  State,  were  appointed  to 
superintend  the  building  of  the  institution,  and  they  accordingly 
sent  a  representative  into  Eastern  States  to  acquire  information 
and  advice.  The  foundation  of  the  new  prison  was  quickly  laid 
near  Nashville,  and  it  was  to  be  310  feet  long  by  58  wide,  and  3 
stories  high.  A  wall  4  feet  thick  and  30  feet  high  would  enclose 
a  yard  310  feet  by  300  in  the  rear  of  the  main  building.  By  1831 
the  prison  was  finished  and  occupied.  It  was  on  the  general  plan 
of  Auburn  and  Wethersfield. 

A  correspondent  of  the  New  York  Observer,  writing  in  1832, 
described  it  as  the  best  penitentiary,  probably,  in  the  valley  of 
the  Mississippi.  On  a  level  plain,  one-half  mile  west  of  the  city 
of  Nashville,  it  stood,  the  yard  covering  3  acres  of  ground.  The 
main  building  when  completed  would  contain  from  200  to  300 
convicts.  At  the  time,  there  were  but  43  convicts,  who  were  work- 
ing daily  in  erecting  the  internal  buildings  and  shops.  There  was 
solitary  confinement  at  night,  and  association  of  work  during  the 
day. 

In  1833  the  prison  was  relatively  complete,  and  was  said  to  be 
on  the  general  plan  of  the  penitentiary  on  Blackwell's  Island, 
New  York  City.  There  were  two  buildings,  4  stories  high,  contain- 
ing in  all  200  cells,  in  which  the  convicts  slept  in  single  cells  at 
night.  There  were  then  65  convicts.  Since  the  opening  of  the 
prison,  three  years  before,  there  had  been  received  no  woman  pris- 
oner. The  convicts  worked  from  sunrise  to  sunset,  with  the 
intervals  for  meals. 

On  Sunday,  the  convicts  were  confined  in  their  cells  for  about 
half  the  day.  Each  convict  had  a  Bible  in  his  cell,  which  was 
sufficiently  light  so  that  he  could  read  in  the  daytime.  There  was  a 
Sabbath  School  for  all  convicts.  Four  hours  of  each  Sunday  was 
given  over  to  instruction  under  a  clergyman.  Reverend  Mr.  Parish, 
the  professor  of  languages  in  Nashville  University,  assisted  by 
four  or  five  ''pious  young  men."  There  was  no  chaplain  appointed 
for  the  prison.  Clerygmen  from  the  surrounding  country  preached. 
On  the  Sabbath,  as  at  the  time  in  Georgia,  the  prisoners  were  some- 
times allowed  a  short  period  in  the  yard.  At  this  time  there  had 
been  no  escapes,  no  insurrections,  and  no  recommitments. 

The  punishments  consisted  of  solitary  confinement  for  not  exceed- 
ing 30  days  on  the  order  of  the  keeper,  subject  to  the  supervision 
of  the  inspectors. 

The  earnings  of  the  prison  exceeded  the  disbursements  during 
the  next  few  years.  The  official  attitude  toward  the  prisoners  was 
far  more  lenient  than  in  the  north,  and  we  find  in  1838  a  law 
providing  for  an  actual  gratuity  and  privilege  for  the  well  con- 
ducted prisoners  in  the  form  of  chewing  tobacco  for  those  accus- 


268  History  of  American  Prisons 

tomed  to  the  weed.  Incidentally,  the  Prison  Discipline  Society  of 
Boston  protested  against  this  action  of  the  Legislature. 

The  missionary,  Gerrish  Barrett,  visited  the  prison  in  1841.  He 
found  a  prison  on  the  Auburn  plan  with  the  keeper's  house,  as 
usual,  in  the  center  of  the  building,  with  the  cellblocks  as  wings 
on  each  side.  The  cell  doors  were  of  wood,  the  grating  in  the 
doors  small,  the  ventilation  of  the  cells  imperfect,  and  the  area 
outside  the  cells  25  feet  wide.  The  number  of  prisoners  was  181, 
of  whom  173  were  white  males  and  6  black  males.  There  were  but 
two  women  in  the  prison. 

Before  the  penitentiary  system  had  been  introduced  into  the 
State,  in  1833,  criminals  were  punished  by  whipping,  cropping, 
hanging  and  other  severe  punishments.  The  punishments  substi- 
tuted therefor  have  been  outlined  above. 

Most  of  the  convicts  were  found  to  be  employed  in  making  hats, 
stonecutting  and  blacksmithing.  The  articles  were  sold  for  the 
account  of  the  State,  and  not  on  contract.  There  was  each  year 
an  excess  of  profits  over  expenses. 

We  find  at  this  time,  in  Tennessee,  a  method  of  commutation  that 
existed  in  no  northern  prison  at  the  time,  and  was  a  very  early 
precursor  of  the  now  customary  methods  of  shortening  the  prison 
sentence  through  good  behavior.  This  method  was  reported  in  the 
journal  of  Gerrish  Barrett,  and  yet  no  comment  whatsoever  was 
made  upon  it  by  the  Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society,  although 
thereby  there  had  been  spread  before  them  the  direction  that  in 
future  years  the  entire  system  of  reduction  of  sentences  by  reward 
for  good  conduct  and  industry  was  to  follow. 

For  good  conduct,  a  deduction  of  two  days  in  each  month  was 
made  from  the  term  of  the  sentence,  and  conversely,  for  each  day 
of  punishment  inflicted,  5  days  were  added  to  the  length  of  sentence. 
Barrett  himself  passed  over  this  revolutionary  departure  from  the 
conventional  methods  without  comment!  He  was  much  more 
concerned  about  the  absence  of  church  or  Sunday  School. 

Visiting  the  prison  again  in  1842  or  3,  he  found  that  the  earnings 
from  the  labor  of  prisoners,  since  the  reception  of  the  first 
prisoners  in  1831,  had  been  more  than  enough  to  meet  the  first  cost 
of  the  Penitentiary.  He  presented  the  following  social  statistics 
relative  to  the  177  convicts  of  the  Penitentiary:  (See  footnote, 
page  260.) 


CHAPTER  XXII 


COUNTY  JAILS 

In  1911,  at  the  National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Corrections, 
held  in  Tremont  Temple,  Boston,  Massachusetts,  an  elderly  man, 
Frederic  H.  Wines,  one  of  the  long-time  authorities  in  the  field  of 
delinquency  and  the  treatment  of  the  criminal,  spoke  in  a  manner 
that  moved  the  great  audience  deeply.  Mr.  Wines  was  the  son  of 
Enoch  C.  Wines,  pioneer  in  this  country  in  agitation  along  more 
modern  lines  for  the  establishment  of  the  State  reformatory,  the 
indeterminate  sentence  and  parole.  The  elder  Wines  had  organized 
the  National  Prison  Association  in  1870.  He  had  been  the  founder 
of  the  International  Prison  Congress  of  1872  in  London.  He  had, 
in  1880,  published  the  most  authoritative  volume  yet  issued  on  the 
*' State  of  Prisons  in  the  United  States." 

Frederic  H.  Wines,  the  son,  had  come  nearly  to  the  end  of  a 
long  and  useful  life.  Many  of  his  friends  sensed  the  fact  that  his 
strength  was  failing.  His  words  that  night  in  1911  were  an 
admonition  to  the  workers  in  charitable  and  correctional  fields  in 
this  country : 

"Mine  is  a  poor,  weak  voice;  it  will  not  carry  very  far.  This  right  arm 
is  not  the  arm  of  a  giant,  nor  even  of  an  athlete;  it  will  not  deliver  a  smash- 
ing blow.  For  the  sake  of  the  human  derelicts  languishing  in  merited  oi* 
unmerited  confinement,  I  could  wish  that  both  were  stronger.  Still  more 
earnestly  do  I  wish  it  for  the  sake  of  our  common  country  and  its  honor. 

"An  old  man  suffers  in  many  ways  that  a  young  man  hardly  understands. 
One  of  my  secret  griefs  is  the  shame  I  feel,  that  my  country  has  so  long 
tolerated,  and  continues  to  tolerate,  a  wrong  which  disgraces  it  in  the  eyes 
of  the  world,  and  which,  unless  it  is  redressed,  must  sooner  or  later  bring 
down  upon  it  the  vengeance  of  Almighty  God. 

".  .  .  The  only  hope  of  enlightened  progress  in  dealing  with  the  prob- 
lem of  crime  in  America  is  the  overthrow  of  the  county  jail  system.  .  .  . 
With  the  State  once  in  command,  there  can  be  no  question  but  it  will  find  a 
way  to  right  the  wrong  and  remedy  the  evils  which  inhere  in  the  present 
organization  and  management  of  minor  prisons." 

This  utterance  came  one  year  after  the  Eighth  International 
Prison  Congress  had  been  held,  for  the  first  time  in  the  United 
States,  at  Washington.  Universal  condemnation  had  been  expressed 
by  the  foreign  delegates,  numbering  over  a  hundred,  of  the  Ameri- 
can county  jails.  The  paradox  of  finding  in  the  same  country  many 
examples  of  the  most  enlightened  and  advanced  treatment  of  prison- 
ers in  reformatories  and  prisons,  and,  on  the  other  side,  the 
abhorrent  neglect  of  lesser  offenders  and  persons  awaiting  trial  in 
county  and  local  prisons,  struck  deeply  into  the  minds  of  the  men 
and  women  from  foreign  countries.  It  would  seem  that  a  clarion 
note  had  been  sounded  in  1910  and  1911  to  American  State  and 
local  governments,  and  that  the  next  general  line  of  attack  in 
penological  matters  should  be  upon  the  county  jail. 

[269] 


270  History  of  American  Prisons 

Nevertheless,  in  1920,  at  the  Semi-Centennial  of  the  American 
Prison  Association,  held  at  Columbus,  Doctor  Hastings  H.  Hart, 
also  one  of  the  oldest  and  most  distinguished  workers  in  the  charita- 
ble and  correctional  fields  in  the  United  States,  challenged  the 
members  of  the  Prison  Congress  as  follows : 

**Men  and  women  of  the  American  Prison  Association,  I  charge  you  with 
fifty  years'  neglect  of  the  most  hopeful  and  most  deserving  part  of  the  prison 
population!  I  beg  you  to  repent  and,  from  this  day  forward,  to  attack  the 
jail  problem  with  the  same  interest  and  intellignce  whereby  such  great  re- 
sults have  been  accomplishd  in  the  reformation  of  convict  prisons  and  the 
development  of  the  modern  adult  and  juvenile  reformatory  system 

"I  have  examined  the  twenty-six  volumes  of  proceedings  from  1883  to  1919. 
They  contain  about  14,000  pages.  Of  these,  about  170  pages  —  a  little  over 
one  per  cent.  —  are  devoted  directly  to  the  subject  of  county  and  municipal 
jails.  In  the  nine  years  from  1888  to  1897,  I  can  find  only  one  page  of 
direct  discussion  of  jails.  It  is  true  that  the  subject  of  county  jails  is  re- 
ferred to  incidentally  in  reports  on  prison  discipline  and  in  numerous  papers 
and  addresses,  but  these  170  pages  are  all  that  I  can  find  dealing  directly 
with  the  subject." 

Why  is  it  that  during  the  century  and  a  half,  approximately, 
since  the  organization  of  the  Philadelphia  prison  society  and  the 
beginning  of  an  American  prison  system,  the  county  jail  has  con- 
tinued to  be  ''the  weakest  link  in  the  American  penal  system ?'* 
Why  does  there  seem  to  be  practically  a  perpetual  blight  upon 
efforts  to  put  the  county  jail  management  upon  an  efficient  basis? 
Is  there  any  hope  that,  as  Doctor  Hart  infers,  there  is  a  solution, 
and  that  reclamation  may  ultimately  start  where  it  logically  should 
start,  in  the  minor  prisons  and  with  the  lesser  offenders? 

The  study  of  the  development,  or  persistency,  of  the  county  jail 
is  not  at  all  without  interest  from  the  historical  standpoint,  and 
out  of  the  experiences  of  the  first  seventy-five  years,  the  period 
covered  by  the  present  study,  we  may  learn  much  as  to  the  causes 
for  the  notorious  position  occupied  even  to-day  by  the  county  jail 
in  our  country.  For  the  county  jail  is  the  basic  correctional  institu- 
tion, out  of  which  grew,  on  the  one  side,  the  prison  and  the  reforma- 
tory, as  well  as  the  juvenile  reform  school  and  the  larger  local 
prisons,  the  Bridewell,  the  debtors'  prison,  and  municipal 
institutions,  on  the  other. 

In  the  Colonial  times,  as  soon  as  a  community  developed  beyond 
the  few  houses  originally  built  and  occupied,  there  was  of  course 
need  for  a  lock-up  for  the  detention  of  offenders.  As  soon  as  a 
county  government  was  instituted,  a  county  place  of  detention 
and  punishment  was  essential.  To  the  county  prison  were  sent  the 
criminals  not  dealt  with  summarily  by  public  punishments.  The 
county  jail  became  quickly,  in  our  Colonial  period,  the  center  for 
the  reception  of  lawbreakers. 

The  Quakers,  foremost  in  the  elements  of  prison  reform,  made 
the  workhouse  in  Pennsylvania  and  New  Jersey  the  basis  of  the 
early  penal  system.  Yet  it  was  inevitable  that  a  county  institution, 
whether  workhouse  or  jail,  should  develop  at  the  call  of  necessity. 


History  of  American  Prisons  271 

In  March,  1682,  it  was  enacted  by  the  assembly  of  East  Jersey  that 

**m  each  county  there  shall  be  a  common  gaol,  which  shall  be  for  felons, 
vagrants  and  idle  persons,  and  safely  to  keep  all  persons  committed  to  gaol 
for  debt  before  or  after  judgment." 

The  administration  of  the  county  gaol  was  vested  in  the  sheriff 
of  the  county,  a  provision  still  generally  existing.  The  Colonial 
gaol  was  a  gather-all.  As  certain  cities,  like  Philadelphia,  New 
York  and  Boston  grew  to  metropolitan  dimensions,  the  gaols  of 
those  cities  became  in  appearance  municipal  prisons,  the  city  and 
county  of  Philadelphia  being,  for  instance,  coterminous. 

Thus  we  found  the  British  in  Philadelphia,  in  1776,  taking 
possession  of  the  local  jail.  In  1787,  the  reorganized  prison  society 
of  Philadelphia  was  to  direct  its  attention  in  greater  measure  to 
the  miserable  physical  and  social  conditions  of  the  public  jails.  It 
was  the  scandalous  old  jail  at  the  corner  of  Third  and  High  Streets 
in  Philadelphia  that  was  abandoned  in  1790  in  favor  of  the  Walnut 
Street  Prison,  which  became  the  first  State  prison.  But,  as  we  saw 
in  the  initial  chapters  of  this  study,  within  relatively  few  years  the 
Walnut  Street  Prison  became  congested  and  conglomerate  in  its 
character,  taking  on  again  many  of  the  attributes  of  the  abandoned 
jails. 

Then  came  the  first  effort  at  a  division -and  classification  of  the 
prison  population  on  the  basis  of  the  elimination  of  the  lesser 
offenders  from  the  State  prison,  and  their  confinement  in  a  local 
jail.  As  we  said  in  Chapter  Five,  some  physical  alleviation  came 
when  the  Bridewell  was  built,  on  Mulberry  and  Broad  Streets. 
To  this  institution  were  sent  henceforth  those  lesser  offenders  whom 
we  to-day  classify  as  misdemeanants,  or  violators  of  local  ordi. 
nances.  In  short,  the  prison  had  sloughed  off  a  certain  proportion 
of  its  former  population  —  yet  the  Walnut  Street  Prison  continued 
to  be  congested  with  felons,  due  to  the  increase  of  the  prison 
population  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  State's  population. 

In  the  city  of  New  York  a  similar  development  occurred.  We 
have  seen  how  Newgate  Prison  of  New  York  became  a  center  of 
promiscuous  association,  and  how  the  first  prison  system  broke 
down.  We  saw  Thomas  Eddy,  as  early  as  1804,  recognizing  that 
the  prison  in  Greenwich  was  wholly  inadequate  to  deal  with  the 
crime  problem,  and  urging  that  a  new  prison  be  constructed  to  take 
the  place  of  the  then  existing  Bridewell,  from  which  only  a  few 
years  before  the  felons  and  major  offenders  had  been  received  in 
the  new  prison.  Both  in  Philadelphia  and  New  York,  as  well  as 
in  Boston,  the  first  State  prison  grew  ultimately  into  a  magnified 
county  jail,  so  far  as  problems  of  congestion,  promiscuous  associa- 
tion, debauchery  and  general  physical  conditions  were  concerned. 
But  out  of  the  first  State  prison  system  evolved  a  second  system, 
of  silence,  labor,  and  repression,  typified  by  Auburn  and  the 
Eastern  Penitentiary.  No  such  development  came  to  the  minor 
prisons,  the  jails,  the  Bridewells,  the  local  prisons.     When  the 


272  History  of  American  Prisons 

Prison  Discipline  Society  was  organized  in  Boston  in  1825,  its  pri- 
mary stress  was  laid  upon  the  betterment  of  State  prisons.  Yet, 
in  its  first  annual  report  it  dilated  upon  deplorable  conditions  in 
county  jails,  and  it  is  from  this  point  on  that  we  find  systematic 
attention  given  to  the  horrifying  indifference  of  the  county  and  its 
residents  to  the  plight  of  the  denizens  of  county  jails. 

The  county  jails  in  all  States  south  of  the  Potomac  were  destitute 
of  court-yards,  and  had  windows  on  the  streets.  So  insecure  was 
one  jail  in  Virginia  that  all  the  prisoners  made  their  escape  in  the 
winter  of  1824-25.  In  northern  States,  the  new  prison  discipline 
society's  secretary  found  cells  or  rooms  without  windows,  some 
cells  in  which  the  only  ventilation  was  through  cracks  in  the  door. 
Three  men  were  placed  in  one  such  cell,  and  within  a  few  hours 
the  keeper  found  them  apparently  lifeless.  In  many  jails  the  only 
means  of  communicating  with  prisoners  was  through  holes  in  the 
cell  doors. 

'\  The  same  jail  treatment  was  meted  out  to  persons  convicted  and 
to  those  awaiting  trial.  A  man  condemned  to  several  years  for 
robbing  the  mail  was  found  in  the  same  cell  with  others  who  had 
not  been  proven  guilty.  A  black  man  was  found  in  a  large  cell, 
naked,  with  eleven  other  persons,  also  prisoners.  In  many  jails  in 
the  larger  towns  no  clothing  was  furnished  by  the  jail  authorities, 
and  the  prisoners  wore  such  clothes  as  they  had. 

In  the  District  of  Columbia  was  an  old  jail,  described  as  follows 
by  Representative  Thompson  in  Congress  in  January,  1826: 

"Here,  just  under  the  eye  of  Congress,  not  half  a  mile  from  the  hall  in 
which  we  legislate,  we  have  the  worst  prison  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic 
The  building  is  divided  by  a  passage  from  one  end  to  the  other,  on  each  side 
of  which  are  eight  cells.  In  these  16  cells  the  marshal  has  frequently  been 
compelled  to  confine  70  or  sometimes  80  individuals,  among  them  innocent 
individuals,  against  whom  no  bill  was  afterwards  found;  and  these  imprisoned 
not  for  an  hour,  but  for  months.     .     .     . 

"In  one  of  these  cells  were  confined  ...  7  persons,  3  women  and  4 
children.  They  were  almost  naked;  one  of  them  was  sick,  lying  on  the  damp 
brick  filoor,  without  bed,  pillow  or  covering.  In  this  abominable  cell,  these 
7  human  beings  were  confined,  day  by  day,  without  a  bed,  chair  or  stool,  or 
any  other  of  the  most  common  necessities  of  life;  compelled  to  sleep  on  the 
damp  floor  without  any  covering  but  a  few  dirty  blankets.  ...  I  forbear 
to  describe  more  minutely  the  uncleanliness  of  this  abominable  place." 

Probably  as  a  result  of  this  impassioned  statement,  $5,000  was 
appropriated  by  Congress  to  repair  the  jail  at  Washington,  $10,000 
to  build  a  jail  in  Alexandria  and  $40,000  to  build  a  penitentiary  in 
Washington. 

\It  was  at  this  period,  in  1826-27,  that  agitation  in  several  States 
resulted  in  the  erection  of  separate  institutions,  called  houses  of 
refuge  or  houses  of  reformation,  for  the  reformatory  treatment  of 
juvenile  delinquents,  through  their  removal  from  prisons  and  jails, 
and  their  care  along  radically  different  lines,  stressing  education 


History  of  American  Prisons 


273 


and  reformation,  and  reducing  the  element  of  punishment.  A  con- 
siderable proportion  of  lads  and  even  boys  were  found  in  the 
prisons 


States 

Whole  Number 

Under  21 

Proportion 

Maine                    

116 
263 
634 
117 

997 
201 

22 

47 
75 
39 
148 
30 

lto5 

Mpwf  TTftmnshirft                       ... 

lto6 

lto7 

f^nnnppt.imit.                            . 

lto3 

Auburn            ••• 

lto6 

Virsdnia 

lto7 

Children  under  twelve  ye 

ars  of  age  were  found  in 

the  prisons. 

**The  loathsome  skin,  the  distorted  features,  the  unnatural  eyes  of  some 
of  these  boys  indicate  the  existence  of  unutterable  abominations." 

Jail  fever  had,  within  the  previous  three  years,  raged  twice  at 
the  Bridewell  in  New  York  City,  and  from  there  had  been  intro- 
duced into  the  local  Penitentiary  at  Bellevue,  on  the  East  River 
"near  New  York."  This  prison  was  an  intermediate  institution 
between  the  Bridewell  and  the  State  Prison,  and  will  shortly  be 
more  fully  described.  The  Prison  Discipline  Society  reported  that 
the  wretched  ''apartment"  in  the  Bridewell  was  the  common  recep- 
tacle of  all  the  males  who  were  committed  to  that  prison.  It  had  con- 
tained at  one  time  90  persons  ''in  a  common  mass  of  drunkenness, 
lasciviousness,  obscenity,  madness,  filth,  lunacy  and  fever."  The 
Bridewell  was  declared  to  be  a  common  nuisance,  within  20  yards 
of  the  City  Hall. 

"When  the  secretary  of  this  society  visited  the  Bridewell  this  season,  he 
was  told  that  it  would  not  be  safe  to  risk  his  life,  even  for  the  few  moments, 
in  the  room  in  which  most  of  the  persons  committed  were  immediately  con- 
fined by  20 's." 

In  Philadelphia's  old  county  prison,  the  deaths  in  the  female 
department  in  the  last  year  had  been  one  fourth  of  the  population. 
Vagrants  were  confined  in  the  hospital,  diseased  "in  a  dreadful 
manner  which  may  not  be  named."  The  average  deaths  in  the 
Walnut  Street  Prison  in  Philadelphia  had  been  for  six  years  more 
than  six  per  cent. 

The  Prison  Discipline  Society,  in  this  survey  of  jails  in  its  initial 
year  of  activity,  found  recidivism  and  intemperance  striking  char- 
acteristics of  the  jails.  The  superintendent  of  the  Almshouse  and 
Penitentiary  in  New  York  City  declared  that  nine-tenths  of  the 
commitments  were  from  intemperance,  while  the  similar  officer  in 
the  Boston  House  of  Correction  set  the  number  at  three-fourths, 
or  recidivist  was  cited: 
Keceived. 


A  typical  "rounder' 
B.  L. 


October  8,  1824. 
January  11,  1825. 
February  11,   1825. 
October   12,   1825. 
January  26,   1826. 
April   26.    1826. 
July  28,  1826. 
August  29,  1826. 


Discharged. 
October  14,   1824. 
January  17,   1825. 
August  9,   1825. 
November  11,  1825. 
April    25,    1826. 
July   25,   1826. 
August  12,  1826. 


274  History  of  American  Prisons 

Obviously,  with  suCh  a  stream  of  repeaters,  vagrants,  drunkards, 
and  petty  offenders  flowing  ceaselessly  through  the  jails  and  Bride- 
wells, there  was  no  inducement  to  aim  at  reformation  of  the  inmates. 
There  was  no  continuity  of  executive  management  of  the  jails.  In 
the  county  prisons  or  jails  the  sheriffs,  elected  by  partisan  politics, 
could  not  in  most  States  succeed  themselves.  The  physical  condi- 
tions of  the  jails  were  in  almost  all  cases  primitive,  if  not  actually 
repellant  and  abhorrent.  The  most  degraded  types  of  humanity 
were  committed  to  these  institutions  and  in  a  conglomerate  mass. 
Here  and  there,  an  institution  for  lesser  offenders  rose  above 
the  great  mass  of  jails,  sometimes  because  of  its  bulk  and  great 
populations,  sometimes  because  of  its  exceptional  management. 
The  Penitentiary  in  New  York  City  was  such  an  institution,  famed 
at  first  only  for  the  highly  objectionable  conditions  existing  therein. 
It  was  connected  with  the  Almshouse,  on  the  East  River,  some  two 
and  one-half  miles  from  City  Hall.  It  was  in  the  same  yard  with 
numerous  other  buildings,  and  to  these  institutions  were  sent  the 
paupers,  the  criminals  and  the  wretched  flotsam  and  jetsam  of  the 
city,  who  were  not  sentenced  to  State  prison.  The  number  of  the 
poor  people  brought  together  here  at  some  seasons  of  the  year  was 
about  2,000.  The  Penitentiary  was  on  the  old  plan  of  large  rooms, 
sometimes  holding  twelve  persons  thus  crowded  together.  In  one- 
fourth  of  the  building,  cells  on  the  Auburn  plan  had  been  recently 
erected,  at  the  time  of  the  visit  of  the  Boston  society's  secretary. 
For  a  short  time  there  was  a  treadmill  connected  with  the  Peniten- 
tiary, almost  the  only  example  of  this  form  of  discipline  recorded 
among  the  prisons  of  this  country,  and  then  only  for  a  few 
years. 

The  Penitentiary  was  under  the  same  general  supervision  as  the 
Almshouse,  a  board  of  commissioners ;  there  was  the  same  superin- 
tendent, the  same  physician  and  the  same  chaplain.  The  prisoners 
varied  from  200  to  300  at  one  time.  With  the  erection  of  the  House 
of  Refuge  the  children,  formerly  at  the  Penitentiary,  were  moved  to 
the  new  institution.  A  large  proportion  of  all  the  prisoners  at  the 
Penitentiary  were  colored.  The  crimes  were  chiefly  larceny,  assault 
and  battery,  and  the  lesser  grades  of  crime  common  to  a  large  city. 
Sentences  did  not  exceed  three  years.  Employment  in  the  prison 
was  very  irregular,  there  being  the  treadmill,  a  pin  factory,  and  the 
picking  of  oakum,  as  well  as  intermittent  work  on  the  public  high- 
ways. There  was  no  system  of  labor.  The  superintendent  of  the 
institution  was  wholly  pessimistic  as  to  the  possibilities  of  reforma- 
tion of  the  inmates: 

**As  well  might  you  kindle  a  fire,  with  a  spark,  on  the  ocean,  in  a  storm." 
The  county  prisons  were  generally  constructed  without  reference 
to  classification,  inspection  by  the  officers,  or  economy.  Prisoners 
were  allowed  to  commingle  freely,  and  hence  to  contaminate  each 
other.  Keepers  argued  as  follows,  in  favor  of  the  commingling  of 
prisoners : 

It  takes  more  time  to  open  many  doors  than  it  does  to  open  a  few. 
There  are  some  apartments  in  upper  stories  and  it  is  not  convenient  to  put 
the  prisoners  up  there. 


History  of  American  Prisons 


275 


It  takes  more  work  to  feed  and  warm  the  rooms  when  the  prisoners  are 
separated. 

Prisoners  \vish  to  be  in  the  same  rooms  for  company. 

In  general  there  was  free  communication  through  the  doors 
between  the  different  cells.  There  was  a  great  lack  of  cleanliness, 
as  might  be  expected,  and  vermin  swarmed.  County  prisons  had 
far  more  females  as  prisoners  than  did  the  State  prisons,  for  there 
was  frequent  reluctance  to  sentence  a  woman  to  State  prison,  and 
the  county  prisons  were  the  remaining  feasible  institution.  Often 
there  was  no  matron  to  supervise  the  female  prisoners.  Many 
prisoners,  both  male  and  female,  were  simply  held  for  trial,  and 
were  finally  discharged,  not  condemned,  '* without  bill  or  witness.'' 
In  the  county  jails,  among  the  prisoners,  were  many  children  and 
youths. 

In  the  New  York  Penitentiary,  in  1828,  no  change  had  been 
effected  in  the  night-rooms  or  large  cells,  and  ''convicts  could  not 
lie  down  without  mingling  their  limbs  in  one  solid  mass. ' '  In  New 
York  City  an  aged  clergyman,  the  Reverend  John  Stanford,  almost 
four-score  years  old,  was  continuing  to  * 'fulfill  his  numerous 
appointments  at  the  State  Prison  at  Greenwich,  the  Penitentiary 
at  Bellevue,  the  Bridewell  and  the  Debtors'  Jail." 

Statistics  from  the  Bridewell  in  New  York  for  the  years  1822-25 
showed  the  extraordinarily  large  number  of  prisoners  who  passed 
out  of  the  Bridewell  without  ever  coming  to  trial : 


Years 

Committed 
to  Bridewell 

Tried 

Acquitted 

Condemned 

Discharged 
without  trial 

1822 

2361 
1926 
1961 
2168 

541 
599 
586 
547 

180 
177 
169 
161 

361 
422 
417 
386 

1820 

1823 

1327 

1824 

1375 

1825   .... 

1621 

8416 

2273 

687 

886 

6143 

In  short,  of  8,416  persons  committed  to  the  Bridewell,  6,143 
were  discharged  without  trial.  And  from  Philadelphia  it  was 
reported  in  1828  that 

**of  about  130  ordered  for  trial  at  a  late  court  of  quarter  sessions,  there 
were  about  70  or  80  against  whom  no  bills  had  been  found,  many  of  whom 
were  apparently  without  offense,  and  were  of  course  discharged,  but  with 
tarnished  characters,  and  probably  with  minds  corrupted  during  their  sojourn 
in  prison." 

The  Boston  Society's  secretary  had  hardly  begun  his  visits  to 
jails  and  other  lesser  institutions  of  corrections  before  he  became 
aware  of  the  abominable  conditions  surrounding  many  persons  who 
were  imprisoned  for  debt.  These  people  were  not  criminals,  yet 
were  forced  to  abide  with  criminals.  They  were  not  convicts,  yet 
they  were  in  prison,  and  their  eyes  and  ears  and  bodies  were 
subjected  to  the  same  abhorrent  surroundings,  the  same  filth  and 
licentiousness  as  were  the  persons  committed  for  some  form  of 


276  History  of  American  Prisons 

lawbreaking.  The  smallness  of  the  sums  because  of  which  debtors 
were  thrown  into  jail  was  shocking  to  the  sensibilities  of  men  and 
women  of  the  time  we  are  studying,  when  the  facts  were  brought 
to  their  attention. 

In  one  county  prison,  out  of  37  cases  of  imprisonment  for  debt, 
20  were  for  less  than  $20.  In  another  State,  the  law  prohibited 
imprisonment  for  a  sum  less  than  $13.33.  *'Such  a  law  would 
diminish  imprisonment  for  debt  in  Massachusetts  by  one  half," 
wrote  the  secretary,  Mr.  Dwight.  The  amount  of  costs  in  connection 
with  the  prosecution  was  more  than  one-half  the  average  amount 
of  the  debts  themselves.  In  18  cases  cited,  the  whole  amount  of 
the  debts  was  $155.68,  and  the  loss  of  time  to  the  debtors  themselves 
in  prison  was  236  days  — ''which  at  75  cents  a  day  would  have  paid 
the  debts." 

The  fruitlessness  of  the  efforts  to  collect  debts  in  this  manner 
was  more  than  clear.  In  one  instance,  out  of  42  cases  of  imprison- 
ment for  debt,  only  two  debts,  totalling  $16,  were  paid,  or  a  propor- 
tion of  $1  to  $141  of  the  total  debts.  Thirteen  of  the  debtors 
were  imprisoned  13  months,  and  then  discharged.  In  most  States, 
the  debtor  was  retained  in  prison  only  so  long  as  the  creditor  paid 
a  stipulated  sum  for  his  maintenance.  Since  the  creditor  was  gener- 
ally not  going  to  secure  his  payment  from  a  man  who  by  reason  of 
his  being  in  prison  had  no  chance  to  earn  the  sum  required,  it 
followed  that  such  imprisonment  was  often  solely  for  purposes  of 
revenge.  With  the  coming  in  of  laws  requiring  the  creditor  to 
pay  the  board  of  the  debtor  in  prison,  the  amount  of  imprisonment 
for  debt  was  found  to  diminish  by  one  half.  In  New  York,  the 
number  of  cases  of  imprisonment  for  debt  in  1828  was  1,085.  Debts 
amounted  to  $25,409 ;  damages  to  $362,076.  The  amount  paid  by 
debtors  in  jail  toward  the  cancellation  of  such  debts  was  only  $295. 
The  Boston  Society 's  report  for  1829  estimated  that  75,000  persons 
were  annually  imprisoned  for  debt  in  the  United  States. 

In  another  section  of  the  same  year's  report,  the  following 
estimates  were  cited  of  the  extent  of  such  imprisonment  for  debt, 
and  the  causes  thereof : 

Number  of  persons  imprisoned  for   debt  annually  in  the   United 

States,  principally  from  the  intemperate  use  of  ardent  spirits 50,000 

Costs  of  process  in  50,000  cases  of  imprisonment  for  debt $250,000 

Expenses  of  courts  for  same  number  of  cases 250,000 

Loss  of  time  in  prison  at  60  cents  per  day,  of  50,000  for  15  days 

each    450,000 

Board  of  the  same 250,000 

Turnkey,  notifying  creditor,  administering  oath,  etc 125,000 

Derangement  of  affairs  as  much  as  loss  of  time 450,000 

Grand  total $1,755,000 

Visitors  to  the  jail  sometimes,  but  all  too  infrequently,  would 
discharge  a  debtor  by  paying  the  debt.  In  the  Arch  Street  Prison 
in  Philadelphia, 

**a  gentleman  from  Boston  discharged  a  decent  young  man  from  close  con- 
finement in  this  jail  in  February,  1830,  by  paying  costs  $1.50  and  the  orig- 
inal debt,  25  cents.  He  would  in  all  probability  have  remained  in  jail  30  days. 


History  of  American  Prisons  277 

In  the  part  of  this  prison  appropriated  to  debtors,  the  unfortunate 
inmates,  white  and  black,  were  found  in  one  hall  together,  with  privations  so 
great  as  to  form  a  severe  punishment  for  their  misfortunes  and  poverty." 

The  estimates  of  the  proportion  of  debtors  in  the  county  and 
local  prisons,  in  comparison  with  the  ''criminals,"  are  surprising. 
In  Worcester,  Massachusetts,  they  were  3  to  1 ;  in  Rhode  Island,  4 
to  1 ;  in  17  prisons  of  the  north  and  middle  States  nearly  5  to  1. 
In  Philadelphia,  30  persons  were  in  prison  for  debts  of  less  than  one 
dollar ;  in  30  prisons  there  were  595  persons  imprisoned  for  more 
than  $1  and  less  than  $5 ;  in  32  prisons  there  were  2,184  persons 
imprisoned  for  more  than  $5  and  less  than  $20.  For  more  than  $20 
and  less  than  $100,  there  were  902.  The  number  of  persons  im- 
prisoned for  debts  of  over  $100  was  very  small,  or  as  1  to  7 
compared  with  the  number  imprisoned  for  less  than  $20. 

In  15  prisons  of  the  north  and  middle  States  the  following  figures 
applied : 

Less   than   one   day's   imprisonment 269 

More  than  1  and  less  than  5  days 323 

More  than  5  and  less  than  10  days 203 

More  than  10  and  less  than  20  days - 154 

More  than  20  and  less  than  30  days 83 

Over  30   days 431 

There  was  a  total  of  19,987  days  of  imprisonment.  In  17  prisons, 
out  of  2,057  imprisoned,  only  294  paid  their  debts.  Three  times  as 
many  were  discharged  by  the  creditor  as  paid  their  debts.  Twice 
as  many  took  the  poor  debtor's  oath  as  paid  their  debts. 

The  operation  of  the  laws  relating  to  imprisonment  for  debt  were 
very  different  in  the  northern  and  the  southern  States.  In  17 
prisons  of  the  northern  States,  in  1830,  2,742  persons  were  im- 
prisoned for  debt.  In  same  number  of  southern  prisons,  only 
35  persons.  In  Massachusetts,  the  law  forbade  any  imprisonment 
for  debts  less  than  $5.  In  New  Hampshire,  for  less  than  $13.33. 
Massachusetts  required  the  creditor  to  pay  the  debtor 's  board.  One 
jailer  testified  to  the  Society  that  many  cases  of  imprisonment  for 
small  debts  would  be  prevented  if  the  creditors  were  obliged  to  take 
oath  that  the  debts  were  true  debts.  The  Society  found  that  in 
Kentucky  and  Ohio,  imprisonment  for  debt  had  already  been 
abolished.     The  sheriff  of  Hunterdon  County,  New  Jersey,  wrote: 

**The  laws  of  New  Jersey  provide  food,  bedding  and  fuel  for  criminals  in 
the  county  prisons;  but  for  debtors  nothing  is  provided  but  walls,  bars  and 
bolts.  An  applicant  for  the  benefit  of  the  insolvent  law  of  this  State  must 
make  oath  that  he  has  rendered  a  true  and  perfect  inventory  of  all  his  lands 
and  tenements,  goods  and  chattels,  money  and  effects.  This  inventory  must 
accompany  his  petition  to  the  county  court  for  the  benefit  of  the  insolvent 
laws.  The  court  then  appoints  him  a  hearing  in  forty  days  after  making  this 
application.  You  will  now  perceive  the  debtor  must  subsist  during  these 
forty  days  upon  the  cold  and  precarious  crumbs  of  charity,  starve  to  death 
in  prison,  or,  infinitely  worse  than  either,  live  upon  the  avails  of  a  foresworn 
conscience. '  * 

The  Providence  Daily  Advertiser,  in  this  same  year,  published  a 
statement  one  day,  that 

*'on  Saturday  last,  upwards  of  20  persons  were  comitted  to  jail  in  this  town, 
for  debt,  or  executions.     .     .     .     Among  the  debtors  are  many  of  our  most 


278  History  of  American  Prisons 

worthy  fellow  citizens.  One  of  them,  Captain  Samuel  Godfrey,  is  now  86 
years  of  age,  with  the  loss  of  hearing,  and  nearly  bent  double  by  infirmities. 
We  envy  not  the  feeling  of  a  creditor  who  thus  exacts  the  pound  of  flesh, 
at  an  age,  too,  when  the  sources  of  life  are  so  dried  up,  that  he  might  venture 
to  cut  it  out  without  the  risk  of  drawing  a  drop  of  blood." 

In  the  same  year,  the  Society  received  many  letters  from  prom- 
inent men  throughout  the  country,  among  which  letters  one  from 
**E.  P."  may  be  thus  summarized  as  presenting  the  then  current 
view  among  intelligent  citizens : 

"Imprisonment  is  punishment.  Punishment,  if  deserved,  implies  previous 
crime.  But  poverty  is  of  itself  no  crime.  Therefore  inability  to  pay  a  just 
debt  does  not  necessarily  imply  crime.  Consequently,  imprisonment  merely 
on  account  of  such  inability  is  unjust  and  wrong. 

"If  it  can  be  shown  that  the  debtor  has  committed  a  crime,  let  him  be 
punished  for  his  crime,  and  according  to  his  deserts.  But  let  him  not  be 
punished  for  what  may  be  merely  his  misfortune." 

In  the  Society's  report  for  1831,  certain  progress  was  reported  in 
some  States  toward  more  lenient  debtor  laws.  Maine  had  passed  a 
law  abolishing  imprisonment  for  debt  exceeding  five  dollars,  and 
punishing  fraudulent  debtors.  In  New  Hampshire  generous  ''jail 
yard  limits"  were  established,  being  for  debtors  the  limits  of  the 
town.  In  Vermont,  poor  debtors  were  allowed  to  take  the  poor 
debtors'  oath  within  two  hours  after  judgment  was  rendered. 
There  was,  however,  nothing  to  prevent  imprisonment  for  small 
sums.  In  Massachusetts  a  law  was  passed  in  1831  exempting 
females  from  imprisonment  for  debt,  and  others  for  sums  less  than 
$10.  In  New  York  a  law  was  to  go  into  effect  in  March,  1832, 
abolishing  imprisonment  for  debt.  There  was  in  New  York  City  a 
society  for  the  relief  of  debtors  confined  for  small  debts,  but  only 
15  persons  seemed  to  have  been  released  during  a  given  period, 
probably  a  year,  whose  debts  altogether  amounted  to  only  $132. 
In  Maryland  a  law  was  passed  exempting  all  persons  from  imprison- 
ment for  debt  who  had  resided  in  the  State  four  months,  and  where 
the  debt  did  not  exceed  $30. 

However,  the  Prison  Discipline  Society  of  Boston  reported  in 
this  year  that 

"in  regard  to  our  county  prisons,  nothing  has  been  done  in  the  way  of  re- 
form; and  we  have  no  heart  to  pull  down  the  old  county  prisons  and  build 
greater,  while  the  principal  cause  of  any  such  necessity  arises  from  the  fact 
that  about  3  in  1  of  all  the  persons  committed  in  them  are  for  debt,  and 
about  two-thirds  of  these  are  for  debts  under  $20,  and  from  one-half  to  two- 
thirds  of  the  whole  number  on  writ,  without  judge,  jury  or  witness.  The 
country  at  large  does  not  seem  inclined  to  enlarge  its  county  prisons  for  the 
sake  of  persons  incarcerated  for  small  debts.  .  .  .  We  shall  therefore  labor 
(as  a  society)  for  the  present  to  prevent  the  imprisonment  of  persons,  at  least 
for  small  debts,  rather  than  labor  to  enlarge  or  rebuild  the  county  prisons, 
for  their  solitary  confinement  or  more  severe  discipline." 

We  turn  now  to  another  class  of  inmates  of  the  county  prisons, 
the  insane,  whose  indescribably  wretched  and  unjust  fate  shocked 
the  new  secretary  of  the  newly -formed  Prison  Discipline  Society. 
In  the  first  annual  report,  in  1826,  appeared  a  brief  outline  of 
some  of  the  most  flagrant  instances  of  the  horrible  treatment  of  the 
**  lunatics." 


History  of  American  Prisons  279 

It  was  estimated  that  in  Massachusetts  there  were,  at  the  time, 
about  30  lunatics  in  county  prisons.  One  was  found  in  a  jail,  in  a 
cell  where  he  had  been  for  nine  years.  He  had  a  ''wreath  of  rags'' 
about  his  body.  Another  wreath  of  tattered  garments  was  about 
his  neck.  In  the  cell  was  no  bed,  chair  or  bench.  There  were  two 
or  three  rough  planks  in  the  room  on  which  he  could  sleep.  In  the 
corner  was  a  heap  of  filthy  straw.  He  had  built  a  bird's  nest  of  mud 
in  the  open  grate  of  his  den. 

"Connected  with  his  wretched  apartment  was  a  dark  dungeon,  having  no 
orifice  for  the  admission  of  light,  heat  or  air,  except  the  iron  door  about  two 
and  one-half  feet  square  opening  into  it  from  his  prison.  The  wretched 
lunatic  was  indulging  some  delusive  expectations  of  being  soon  released  from 
his  wretched  abode." 

In  one  county  prison  there  were  ten  lunatics. 

"Two  were  found,  about  70  years  of  age,  a  male  and  female,  in  the  same 
apartment  of  an  upper  story.  The  female  was  lying  on  a  heap  of  straw, 
under  a  broken  window.  The  snow,  in  a  severe  storm,  was  beating  through 
the  window,  and  lay  upon  the  straw  around  her  withered  body,  which  was 
partly  covered  with  a  few  filthy  and  tattered  garments.  The  man  was  lying 
in  a  corner  of  the  room  in  a  similar  situation,  except  that  he  was  less  exposed 
in  the  storm.  The  former  had  been  in  this  apartment  six,  and  the  latter 
twenty-one  years." 

Another  lunatic  had  in  eight  years  left  his  room  only  twice. 
The  door  had  not  been  opened  in  eighteen  months.  In  the  midst 
of  the  horrid  and  indescribable  filth  he  lived.  Seen  through  the 
door,  the  question  was :    ' '  Is  that  a  human  being  ? ' ' 

* '  The  hair  was  gone  from  one  side  of  his  head,  and  his  eyes  were  like  balls 
of  fire." 

In  another  room,  a  cellar,  were  five  lunatics,  of  whom  the  keeper 
said: 

"We  have  a  sight  to  do  to  keep  them  from  freezing." 

The  treatment  of  the  insane  was,  at  this  period,  still  mainly  of 
the  nature  described  by  the  few  typical  instances  just  cited.  The 
number  of  instances  might  be  increased  indefinitely.  Harrowing 
beyond  all  other  narratives  of  prison  treatment  are  many  of  these 
descriptions.  In  the  entire  United  States,  at  the  end  of  the  twenties 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  there  were  but  few  asylums  for  the 
insane.  An  asylum  had  been  established  in  Williamsburg,  Virginia, 
before  the  Revolution.  Kentucky  had  a  State  asylum.  The  private 
asylum,  called  the  McLean  Asylum,  had  been  in  existence  in 
Charlestown,  Massachusetts,  since  1818,  and  the  Connecticut  Re- 
treat for  the  insane  had  been  established  at  Hartford  in  1824.  The 
private  asylum  of  Bloomingdale  was  founded  in  New  York  in  1821. 
In  Pennsylvania  was  the  Pennsylvania  Hospital,  the  oldest  of  its 
kind  for  the  insane  in  this  country,  founded  in  1752.  An  asylum 
in  Frankford,  Pennsylvania,  had  been  established  in  1817. 

In  these  asylums,  the  newer  and  humane  methods  of  treatment 
of  the  insane  were  being  applied  as  the  curative  effects  of  kindness 
and  the  striking  off  of  chains  became  evident.  But  practically 
none  of  these  asylums  was  open  in  any  large  measure  to  the  poor, 


280  History  of  American  Prisons 

and  particularly  to  the  criminal  population,  with  the  result  that 
lunatics,  feared  and  also  regarded  generally  as  no  longer  human, 
were  dealt  with  by  most  primitive  and  often  fearful  methods.  For 
the  security  of  the  public  they  were  confined  in  county  prisons,  or 
in  almshouses,  where  prison  cells  were  erected  for  them.  Or  they 
were  lodged  in  the  yards  or  environs  of  dwelling  houses,  in  cages 
constructed  by  the  families  of  the  lunatics,  and  dealt  with  unintelli- 
gently,  and  often  in  fear.  Garrets  of  houses  would  be  used  as  the 
only  available  place  of  confinement  —  the  ''lunatic"  becoming 
almost  literally  the  skeleton  in  the  closet  of  the  family  —  or  cellars 
were  put  in  use.  Chained,  dragging  heavy  fetters  about  with  them, 
or  fastened  to  huge  staples  in  the  floor,  forced  into  paroxysms  of 
violence,  the  miserable  sufferers  grew  worse  and  worse,  as  the  treat- 
ment grew  cumulatively  abhorrent  and  severe. 

A  report  of  the  New  York  Legislature  showed  in  1825  that  there 
were  in  the  State  of  New  York  *'819  lunatics  and  1,421  idiots." 
The  ratio  in  comparison  with  mentally  normal  people  was  1  to  721. 
Of  these  lunatics,  only  263  were  able  to  pay  for  their  own  support. 
The  other  556  were  insane  paupers,  either  confined  in  private  fam- 
ilies, poorhouses,  or  jails  or  roaming  at  large,  a  terror  to  others. 
Bloomingdale  could  accommodate  by  the  end  of  the  third  decade 
about  200  patients,  and  a  small  private  asylum  at  Hudson,  New 
York,  about  50.  A  committee  of  the  Legislature  recommended  a 
spacious  hospital  in  the  State  to  accommodate  at  least  300  poor  and 
imprisoned  lunatics. 

In  1830,  the  Legislature  of  Massachusetts  appropriated  $30,000 
for  the  erection  at  Worcester  of  a  hospital  for  lunatics.  The  erec- 
tion of  the  institution  went  on  rapidly.  Horace  Mann,  one  of  the 
building  commissioners,  wrote : 

**The  proper  mode  of  treating  insanity  was  almost  universally  unknown, 
and  the  jails  and  houses  of  correction  were  the  only  places  where  the  strict- 
ness of  confinement  then  deemed  indispensable  could  be  enforced.  .  .  . 
It  is  now  most  abundantly  demonstrated  that,  with  appropriate  medical  and 
moral  treatment,  insanity  yields  with  more  readiness  than  ordinary  diseases." 

He  recommended  a  change  in  the  State  law  to  provide  that  as 
soon  as  the  institution  was  ready,  no  lunatic  should  thereafter  be 
committed  to  a  jail  or  house  of  correction,  and  that  all  then  con- 
fined in  jails  and  houses  of  correction  be  transferred  to  the  asylum. 
In  this  connection,  a  curious  omission  is  apparent,  for  when  the 
law  was  passed,  it  did  not  include  the  transfer  of  lunatics  from 
the  State  prison  —  and,  as  we  have  seen  in  Chaptei  XIV,  the 
presence  of  the  insane  in  the  State  prison  was  almost  as  detrimental 
as  in  the  case  of  the  lesser  prisons. 

By  1833,  the  Massachusetts  State  Lunatic  Hospital  at  Worcester 
was  in  operation.  The  Prison  Discipline  Society's  report  for  1836 
showed  that  during  the  previous  year,  113  patients  had  been 
received,  112  discharged  and  111  were  remaining.  Of  the  dis- 
charged, 52  had  recovered,  and  23  were  improved.  Of  the  patients 
during  the  year  ending  November  30,  1835,  whose  insanity  was  of 
less  than  one  year's  duration,  recoveries  were  reported  to  be  82% 


History  of  American  Prisons  281 

per  cent.    Of  the  old  cases,  the  recoveries  were  but  15%  per  cent. 
Ninety-one  applications  for  admission  had  been  rejected. 

**One  case  had  been,  at  the  time  when  he  was  brought  to  the  institution, 
28  years  in  prison;  for  7  years  he  had  not  felt  the  influence  of  fire,  and 
many  nights  he  had  not  lain  down  for  fear  of  freezing.  He  had  not  been 
shaved  for  28  years,  and  he  had  been  provoked  and  excited  by  the  introduc- 
tion of  hundreds  to  see  the  exhibition  of  his  ravings.  He  is  now,  and  has 
been,  comfortable  in  health,  well  clad,  keeps  his  room  remarkably  clean, 
shaves  twice  a  week,  sits  at  table  with  16  others,  takes  his  meals,  walks 
about  the  village,  and  over  the  fields,  with  an  attendant,  and  enjoys  himself 
as  well  as  his  illusions  will  permit." 

The  trustees  of  the  asylum  asked  the  Legislature  for  a  farm. 

*'Shut  up  in  our  halls,  or  in  their  cells,  they  (the  patients)  are  unhappy, 
restless,  discontented,  and  in  consequence  less  mild  and  docile,  often  trouble- 
some. But  when  suffered  to  go  out  into  the  field  and  garden  to  labor,  their 
whole  nature  seems  changed.     .     .     .     They  become  cheerful  and  healthy." 

The  superintendent  of  the  McLean  Asylum,  Doctor  Thomas  G. 
Lee,  was  cited  by  the  Prison  Discipline  Society  as  using  most 
enlightened  methods  with  the  insane.  The  superintendent  recom- 
mended for  the  insane  all  the  varied  industries  of  a  large  farm. 
He  wrote : 

**I  confidently  anticipate  the  time  when  all  these  things  will  be  performed 
in  our  insane  asylums,  and  when  arrangements  for  such  labor  will  be  con- 
sidered as  indispensable  as  the  strong  rooms  and  straight  waistcoats  have 
been  in  times  past.  .  .  .  We  have  within  the  last  eight  months  demon- 
strated not  only  the  practicability  but  the  great  utility  of  labor." 

Just  as  the  Prison  Discipline  Society  elevated  as  a  model  the 
Auburn  Prison,  for  other  States  to  follow,  so  did  the  Society  seek 
to  discover  something  approaching  a  model  among  the  lesser  prisons. 
The  secretary  sought  in  vain  among  the  county  jails  of  which  he 
learned,  in  this  age  before  railroads  and  telegraph.  In  the  second 
year  of  his  incumbency  of  the  office,  he  traveled  several  thousand 
miles.  The  salary  of  the  secretary,  Mr.  Dwight,  was  $1,000,  given 
only  on  condition  that  he  would  give  his  entire  time  to  the  work, 
and  defray  his  own  traveling  expenses.  He  visited  on  his  first  tour 
thirteen  States  and  the  District  of  Columbia,  paying  main  attention 
to  prison  conditions.  It  was  practically  entirely  his  findings  that 
annually  appeared  in  the  annual  reports  of  the  Society.  He  spread 
* '  prison  reform ' '  propaganda  in  the  several  States,  through  groups 
and  committees,  and  sought  to  establish  branches  of  the  Prison 
Discipline  Society  wherever  he  went,  but  without  much  result. 

Dwight 's  hope  was  that  some  county  jail  could  be  found  that  he 
could  praise  in  his  reports.  Rumor  came  to  him  that  there  was  a 
good  jail  in  Geneseo,  New  York;  that  Bangor,  Maine,  was  going 
to  build  a  modern  county  jail.  In  Boston,  the  Leverett  Street  Jail 
was  a  scandal  that  cried  to  heaven.  The  House  of  Correction  in 
Boston  soon  developed  the  model  that  Dwight  was  seeking.  Stone- 
breaking  for  the  macadamizing  of  the  city^s  streets  was  the  princi- 
pal kind  of  labor.  There  never,  according  to  Dwight,  had  appeared 
elsewhere  anything  like  the  industry,  efficiency  and  discipline 
among  the  men  in  the  House  of  Correction  in  1829.    The  matrons 


282  History  of  American  Prisons 

were  pious.  The  earnings  of  the  female  inmates  from  sewing  was 
no  inconsiderable  sum.  There  was,  however,  no  separate  confine- 
ment at  night. 

Dwight  noted  an  interesting  method  of  dealing  with  delirium 
tremens  at  the  Boston  House  of  Correction.  At  once,  on  admission, 
liquor  was  refused  the  inmate,  but  a  strong  decoction  of  wormwood 
was  given  freely,  ' '  like  tea. ' '    There  had  been  only  one  fatality. 

The  Boston  council  appropriated,  in  1831,  $20,000  to  alter  one 
of  the  buildings  among  the  group  of  charitable  and  correctional 
institutions  in  South  Boston,  in  order  that  it  should  contain  200 
cells,  on  the  Auburn  and  Wethersfield  plan.  De  Beaumont  and 
de  Tocqueville  declared  the  House  of  Correction  in  South  Boston  to 
be  a  model  for  similar  establishments,  and  the  county  jail  in 
Leverett  Street  just  the  opposite.  They  pointed  out  that  the  disci- 
pline of  the  Boston  House  of  Correction  dispensed  entirely  with 
the  whip ;  that  there  was  a  hospital  and  a  competent  physician 
in  attendance.  They  remarked  upon  the  cleanliness  of  the 
institution. 

The  Boston  House  of  Correction  was,  indeed,  an  exception  to  the 
run  of  lesser  prisons.  In  Middlebury,  Vermont,  was  a  county  jail, 
for  instance,  of  which  Dwight  wrote: 

"If  it  were  known  to  the  good  people  of  Middlebury,  Vermont,  that  a 
similar  dark  hole  were  in  actual  existence,  and  had  been  for  a  term  of  years, 
in  Calcutta,  and  could  probably  be  purified  and  enlightened  by  sending  a 
missionary  there  for  the  purpose,  his  outfit  might  probably  be  immediately 
furnished  and  his  support  secured  in  that  village,  so  well  known  for  in- 
telligent kindness  and  benevolence." 

The  more  Dwight  traveled,  the  more  outrageous  appeared  to  him 
the  treatment  of  lesser  offenders,  and  those  imprisoned  for  debt. 
Gross  ignorance  characterized  the  jailers  and  the  keepers. 

'*In  the  county  prisons,  to  a  vast  extent  the  keeper  may  be  a  farmer,  a 
deputy  sheriff,  a  tavern  keeper  or  almost  anything  else,  which  requires  his 
absence  except  when  he  turns  the  key.  The  consequence  is,  profane  swearing, 
gambling,  Sabbath  breaking,  universal  disorder  and  idleness;  and  it  seems  not 
yet  to  have  been  thought  that  vigilance  is  necessary  to  county  prisons.  So 
long  as  it  is  supposed  that  any  class  of  prisons  can  be  managed  without  un- 
ceasing vigilance,  so  long  they  will  remain  nurseries  of  vice. 

Taverns  were  frequent  adjuncts  to  the  county  jails.  In  the  old 
county  prison  at  Hartford,  Connecticut,  there  was  a  tavern  under 
the  same  roof,  warmed  by  stoves  in  the  rooms.  It  was  finally  burnt 
—  and  in  its  place  rose  a  jail  that  became  the  model  for  the  Prison 
Discipline  Society  to  refer  to,  as  we  shall  shortly  see.  The  old  jail 
at  Hartford  caught  fire  because  an  insane  female  prisoner,  excited 
over  some  mocking  of  persons,  outside,  kindled  the  fire  and  perished 
in  the  flames.    In  the  new  prison,  to  be  shortly  described  in  detail, 

"no  public  house  is  connected  with  the  jail;  no  spirits  ever  drank  within  its 
walls;  no  conversation  is  ever  permitted  with  the  prisoners,  and  the  sound 
even  of  the  keeper's  voice  is  never  heard  by  the  secluded  and  unhappy  men." 

The  proximity  of  the  tavern  to  the  county  prison  seems  strange 
to  us,  when  known  to  be  under  the  same  management  as  the  jail, 


History  of  American  Prisons  283 

although  into  the  most  modern  times  there  has  been  traced  the 
closest  relationship  of  cause  and  effect  between  the  saloon  and  the 
jail.    But  in  the  period  of  a  century  ago, 

**the  county  jail  was  the  central  point  where  were  gathered  the  authority 
and  business  of  the  county.  Here  it  was  considered  indispensable  that  a 
tavern  should  be  connected  with  it,  as  thus  accommodation  was  afforded  to 
the  judges  of  the  county  court,  the  jury,  and  because,  too,  without  a  tavern 
no  one  could  be  induced  to  keep  a  jail." 

Returning  now  to  the  development  of  the  system  extolled  as 
developed  in  the  House  of  Correction  at  South  Boston  during  the 
thirties,  and  proclaimed  throughout  the  country  wherever  the 
reports  of  the  Prison  Discipline  Society  reached,  we  find  that  by 
1836,  the  only  punishment  allowed  by  law  to  be  inflicted  on  con- 
victs for  infractions  of  the  rules  of  the  prison  was  solitary  confine- 
ment upon  bread  and  water,  or  the  deprivation  of  certain  meals, 
the  offender  being  still  kept  at  labor.  In  1837,  the  institution  had 
been  in  operation  four  years,  with,  250  prisoners  at  the  time  of 
reporting. 

** Stripes  (floggings)  have  not  been  inflicted  in  a  solitary  instance.  Only 
6  keepers,  including  the  master,  and  clerk,  and  two  matrons  make  up  the 
oflficers.  There  is  not  a  gun  and  bayonet,  sword  or  pistol,  cowhide,  cat  or 
whip  of  small  cords,  gag,  restraining  chair,  handcuffs,  stocks,  or  any  other 
instrument  of  restraint,  punishment  or  torture,  about  the  place. 

**No  corporal  punishment  is  or  ever  has  been  inflicted.  Solitary  confine- 
ment without  bed  or  blanket,  with  rations  of  bread  and  water  only,  has 
never  failed  to  produce  the  desired  effect,  even  in  the  most  refractory." 

The  House  of  Correction  was  called  a  model  of  construction.  The 
general  plan  was  of  the  Auburn  type,  but  the  windows  were  fewer 
and  much  larger  than  those  at  Charlestown  and  Sing  Sing.  The 
cell  doors  were  also  better.  The  whole  institution  was  characterized 
by  neatness  and  by  persistent  industry.  There  was  also  a  day 
school  for  20  boys,  two  hours  every  day,  in  the  three  R's.  There 
was  a  Sabbath  School  for  the  women,  taught  in  turn  by  nearly  two 
hundred  ladies.    The  Prison  Discipline  Society  reported  that : 

•*if  there  are  better  models  of  this  class  of  prisons  than  the  Hartford 
County  Jail  and  the  House  of  Correction  at  South  Boston,  we  have  not  seen 
them. ' ' 

Unquestionably,  the  system  of  discipline  at  the  Boston  House  of 
Correction  was  remarkable  in  its  results,  in  an  age  when  the  most 
repressive  methods  were  regarded  in  the  State  prisons  as  being  the 
only  possible  means  of  preserving  safety  of  life  and  property,  and 
of  securing  from  the  convicts  a  requisite  amount  of  work.  Here 
was  an  institution  of  which  we  know  unfortunately  too  little,  where 
methods  of  government,  without  force  or  the  show  of  authority  by 
arms,  prevailed  and  were  successful.  It  has  been  only  within  recent 
years  —  a  decade  perhaps  —  that  we  have  grown  at  all  accustomed 
to  hear  of  prisons  where  guns  and  revolvers  and  other  arms  have 
been  even  partially  abandoned.  It  has  been  generally  supposed  that 
such  results  were  due  in  large  measure  to  the  honor  system,  yet  in 
this  House  of  Correction  of  ninety  years  ago  such  results  were 
achieved.  The  ''master"  of  the  House  of  Correction  —  a  name 
wholly  unknown  to-day  —  was  Charles  Robbins. 


284  History  of  American  Prisons 

We  have  mentioned  the  Hartford  County  Jail,  in  Connecticut. 
The  old  jail  was  superseded  by  a  new  jail,  on  a  lot  of  some  two 
acres,  and  was  built  in  1836-37  at  a  cost  of  less  than  $10,000.  The 
county  prison  was  on  the  Auburn  plan,  with  thirty-two  cells,  each 
10  feet  by  5  feet  by  7  feet.  There  were  three  rooms  for  prisoners, 
each  16  feet  square  by  8  high. 

By  1838,  the  Boston  Society  reported  that  through  the  new  jail 
there  had  resulted  complete  separation  of  the  prisoners,  easy  and 
much  more  perfect  supervision,  reduced  expenses  in  guarding  and 
warming  the  jail,  greatly  increased  ventilation  and  light,  diminished 
danger  or  possibility  of  burning  the  jail,  and  the  repayment  of  a 
large  portion  of  the  expenses  of  the  prisoners  by  the  avails  of  their 
labor.  The  three  inspectors  —  or  members  of  the  board  of  man- 
agers—  were  Amos  Pilsbury,  Alfred  Smith,  and  Nathaniel 
Goodwin.  We  can  readily  understand,  from  the  presence  of  Pils- 
bury on  the  board,  why  the  new  county  prison  was  built  on  the 
Auburn  plan,  and  why  the  method  of  administration  approached 
that  of  Wethersfield. 

In  1839,  the  Hartford  prison  was  called  by  Dwight  ''the  best 
county  prison  that  we  have  ever  seen."  Shoemaking  was  the 
principal  occupation  of  the  inmates.  The  value  of  having  a  ' '  model 
jail"  became  increasingly  apparent.  There  were  said  to  be  about 
twenty  times  as  many  people  committed  to  county  jails  in  the 
United  States  as  to  State  prisons,  or  about  40,000  annually.  Prob- 
ably a  tenth  of  those  committed  were  discharged  subsequently  as 
innocent.  Probably  a  fourth  of  all  those  committed  to  county  jails 
were  debtors.  It  was  estimated  that  more  than  a  thousand  women, 
and  between  a  thousand  and  two  thousand  youths,  were  committed 
annually  to  county  prisons.  The  old-style  county  prisons  were  very 
heavy  burdens  to  the  whole  community,  costing  a  total  of  $600,000 
for  current  expenses.  The  Hartford  jail,  on  the  other  hand,  nearly 
or  quite  supported  itself,  besides  being  an  institution  conducted  on 
an  exemplary  plan.  ''As  our  county  has  been  honored  for  its 
prisons,  so  it  has  been  reproached  for  its  loathsome  county  jails," 
wrote  Dwight. 

It  was  in  the  summer  of  1839  that  a  representative  of  the  Prison 
Discipline  Society,  probably  Dwight  himself,  made  a  journey 
through  the  interior  of  New  York  State.  This  trip,  and  several 
others  in  successive  years  to  State  and  county  prisons  in  the  south 
and  central  States,  furnish  us  with  a  wealth  of  vivid  description, 
from  which  we  shall  quote  in  part,  that  it  may  be  apparent  to  what 
degree  of  callousness,  actual  cruelty  and  stupidity  the  management 
of  the  lesser  prisons  had  arrived: 

Albany,  New  York.  About  20  prisoners,  young  and  old,  tried  and  untried, 
novice  and  hardened  villain,  mingled  together  in  one 
space,  in  front  of  the  cells,  without  supervision  or 
employment.  .  .  15  females  were  in  one  room, 
with  beds,  so  far  as  they  had  beds,  on  the  floor. 
The  jailer  told  us  how  many  times,  by  day  and  by 
night,  it  was  necessary  for  him  to  go  the  round  of 
observation,  and  he  had  to  do  it  all  himself." 


History  of  American  Prisons 


285 


Schenectady,  N.  Y. 
Fonda,  N.  Y. 
Whitesboro,  N.  Y. 
Moirisville,  N.  Y. 
Auburn,  N.Y. 
•Bochester,  N.  Y. 


Canandaigua,  N.  Y. 
Geneseo,  N.  Y. 


Batavia,  N.  Y. 
Buffalo,  N.  Y. 


'*A  jail  recently  built."  This  is  followed  by  a  very 
graphic  description  of  the  plague  of  lice  and  other 
vermin,  from  which  the  prisoners  found  it  impossible 
to  escape. 

**A  gentleman  of  respectability  said  that  a  prisoner, 
with  a  piece  of  iron  hoop,  could  dig  through  the 
walls  in  an  hour.  He  considered  the. erection  of  the 
jail  a  piece  of  peculation." 
"The  smell  of  the  jail  was  so  bad  in  front  of  the 
house  that  I  removed  my  family  a  considerable  dis- 
tance, under  a  shade,  while  the  examination  of  the 
jail  was  made." 

**  There  was  one  prisoner  in  the  jail  for  murder,  to  be 
executed  a  week  from  this  day.  I  found  him  weep- 
ing, and  crying  for  mercy  and  the  forgiveness  of  his 
sins. ' ' 

**The  jailer  was  not  at  home.  His  wife  unlocked  the 
doors  and  a  prisoner  showed  me  the  jail.  It  is  as 
much  better  than  many  old  jails  than  it  is  worse  than 
the  Hartford  jail." 

*' There  has  been  a  praiseworthy  attempt  to  provide 
a  place  where  the  prisoners  might  be  employed  in 
hammering  stone  for  the  highways,  and  considerable 
labor  of  this  kind  has  been  done.  I  visited  the 
ground  selected  for  a  workhouse  and  found  it  low, 
barren  and  uncultivated.  What  is  needed  in  Koches- 
ter  for  this  purpose  is  one  of  the  good  farms  in 
the  vicinity,  elevated,  airy,  well-watered,  fertile  and 
highly  cultivated,  on  which  could  be  erected,  first  a 
workhouse,  then  a  house  of  refuge  for  juvenile  de- 
linquents, and  then  a  jail. 

**  There  is  no  regular  employment,  nor  thorough  super- 
vision, nor  systematic  moral  and  religious  instruction 
in  this  jail." 

**One  young  man,  who  listened  to  me  through  a  small 
orifice  in  the  door  of  his  solitary  cell  had  thirty 
days'  sentence  to  solitary  confinement.  His  cell  was 
a  totally  dark  dungeon,  except  as  a  small  orifice  in 
the  top  of  the  door,  about  as  large  as  the  face  of  a 
man,  admitted  light.  He  could  not  see  to  read  in  his 
cell,  and  when  he  turned  his  back  to  the  door,  he 
could  scarcely  see  his  hand  before  his  face.  .  .  . 
These  cells  are  intolerable  places  of  confinement, 
either  before  or  after  conviction,  .  .  .  There  has 
not  been  a  religious  service  for  several  months.  The 
Presbyterian  minister  of  the  village  said  he  had  not 
done  his  duty  in  the  past,  but  would  endeavor  to 
do  it." 

**The    doors   of   the   cells   are   like   those   in   Geneseo, 

intolerable.  The  jail  was  extremely  filthy." 
**This  is  a  prison  within  a  prison.  The  inner  prison  is 
timber,  shrunk,  and  has  left  a  multitude  of  large 
cracks  and  crevices,  hiding  places  for  vermin.  It 
was  in  this  place  that  I  addressed  the  supervisors, 
about  forty  in  number.  .  .  .  Buffalo  and  New 
York  seem  to  be  the  traps  where  transient  persons 
are  caught  and  imprisoned,  for  the  whole  state. 
One  prisoner  told  me  that  he  was  able  to  keep  off 
the  lice,  by  greasing  the  legs  of  his  bedstead,  and 
tucking  up  the  bedclothes  carefully." 


On  his  travels,  the  representative  of  the  Boston  Society  con- 
stantly held  up  as  a  model  the  Hartford  County  jail.    In  1841  the 


286  History  of  American  Prisons 

county  prison  supported  itself,  and  earned  $600  surplus.  The 
school  of  vice  was  said  to  have  become  a  school  of  reformation. 
"Why  not  make  the  75,000  convicts  in  county  prisons  earn  the 
$1,260,000  annually  that  are  now  lost,  and  apply  the  sum  to  public 
improvements  ? ' '  asked  the  Boston  report.  The  keeper  of  the  Hart- 
ford institution  wrote,  suggesting  that  a  society  be  formed  in 
Connecticut  by  farmers  and  mechanics  for  the  encouragement  of 
discharged  convicts,  by  giving  them  work  at  low  rates  of  wages, 
until  they  could  provide  better  for  themselves. 

Intensely  partisan,  the  reports  of  the  Boston  Society  would  not 
give  fair  and  sympathetic  attention  or  treatment  to  any  institutions 
developed  on  the  Pennsylvania  plan,  either  of  architecture  or 
administrative  methods.  In  Pennsylvania,  the  new  county  prison 
of  Philadelphia,  at  Moyamensing,  was  built  in  the  early  thirties, 
the  appropriation  of  $150,000  having  been  authorized  by  the 
Legislature  in  1831.  The  institution  was  to  take  the  place  of  the 
Walnut  Street  Prison,  and  was  to  be  built  on  the  plan  of  separate 
confinement,  like  the  Eastern  Penitentiary,  with  300  cells,  to  receive 
all  persons  sent  to  Walnut  Street  for  less  than  one  year,  and  all 
persons  heretofore  committed  to  the  Arch  Street  Prison. 

The  prison  was  located  310  feet  on  Passayunk  Road,  and  was 
525  feet  in  depth.  It  was  enclosed  by  a  substantial  yard  wall.  It 
was  of  castellated  Gothic  architecture,  and  was  built  of  Quincy 
sienite.  The  central  building  was  three  stories  high,  with  high 
towers.  On  each  side  of  the  ceiitral  building  were  wings,  receding 
10  feet,  and  about  50  feet  wide.  At  the  extremity  of  the  wings 
were  massive  octagonal  towers,  from  which  extended  the  yard  wall. 
The  central  building  was  to  be  occupied  by  the  keeper  and  his 
family.  The  cells  were  buiH  in  two  blocks,  extending  from  the 
wings,  at  right  angles  with  the  principal  front.  There  were  408 
cells,  each  9  feet  wide,  13  feet  long,  and  9  feet  high.  There  was  a 
corridor  in  the  center,  20  feet  wide  and  extending  the  whole  height 
of  the  building.  The  windows  in  the  cells  were  4  inches  wide  and 
4%  feet  long.  They  were  glazed  with  pressed  glass,  making  them 
translucent.  There  were  two  sections  to  the  county  prison,  so  as 
to  keep  the  untried  and  the  convicted  prisoners  separate  from 
each  other.    The  cornerstone  was  laid  on  April  2nd,  1832. 

By  1836,  the  new  county  prison  was  occupied.  Dwight  makes  no 
comment  upon  it  in  the  annual  report  of  the  Prison  Discipline 
Society  beyond  the  above  fact. 

Gerrish  Barrett,  representative  of  the  Boston  Society,  visited  the 
Moyamensing  prison  in  1841  or  '42.  He  found  it  a  very  complete 
and  costly  establishment.  There  were  three  long  ranges,  radiating 
from  a  common  center  forming  three  distinct  apartments:  (1)  for 
male  vagrants  and  those  awaiting  trial;  (2)  for  convicted  males; 
(3)  vagrants  and  convicted  females  and  those  awaiting  trial.  In 
the  female  department  were  111  vagrants  and  untried  women, 
occupying  50  cells,  and  there  were  30  convicted  women  in  separate 
cells.  The  department  for  convicted  males  had  204  cells,  in  two 
stories.    The  inmates  were  required  to  work,  most  of  them  in  cells, 


History  of  American  Prisons 


287 


some  in  the  prison  yard  and  workshops.  Their  health  was  said  to 
be  promoted  by  their  going  out  of  their  cells  to  work.  At  this  time, 
convicts  could  be  sent  to  Moyamensing  for  any  period,  but  formerly 
there  was  a  limit  of  two  years. 

The  heat  of  the  prison  was  furnished  by  16  coal  heaters,  consum- 
ing 350  tons  of  coal  a  year.  There  was  preaching  in  two 
departments  each  Sunday,  but  there  were  no  attempts  to  teach  the 
ignorant  to  read.  Of  the  last  298  persons  committed,  107  could  not 
read  and  19  could  not  write.  During  the  year  ending  March  1, 
1842,  there  were  committed  to  the  prison  2,123  white  males,  915 
white  females,  1,042  colored  males,  and  930  colored  females.  A  total 
of  5,010. 

Going  back  now  to  the  development  of  the  Penitentiary  in  New 
York  city,  we  find  that  by  1832  much  progress  was  being  made  in 
the  erection  of  the  city's  buildings  for  the  poor  and  the  criminal 
on  *Blackweirs  Island,  which  had  been  bought  by  the  city,  and 
which  was  located  in  the  East  River.  In  1829  the  city  purchased  the 
Island,  which  was  approximately  100  acres  in  extent,  and  some  4 
miles  from  City  Hall.  By  this  year,  a  building  had  been  erected  on 
the  plan  of  the  State  prison  at  Wethersfield,  to  admit  finally  500  in- 
mates. Here,  the  new  Penitentiary  was  being  built,  with  a  north 
wing  of  250  cells  and  a  south  wing  of  an  equal  number,  constructed 
on  the  Auburn  plan.  The  old  penitentiary  building  was  occupied 
by  the  female  convicts,  and  by  untried  prisoners  and  vagrants  who 
formerly  occupied  the  Bridewell.  The  female  convicts  convicted  of 
State  prison  offenses  were  occupying  one  part  of  the  old  building, 
pending  the  erection  by  the  State  of  a  separate  prison  for  women. 
The  old  Bridewell  near  the  City  Hall  was  now  given  up,  and  was 
used  for  the  confinement  of  the  very  few  remaining  debtors.  The 
former  debtors'  prison  was  abandoned,  and  was  being  renovated, 
to  become  later  the  Hall  of  Records. 

In  1838,  on  January  19th  (to  cite  a  specific  date  for  statistical 
purposes),  the  ''count"  in  the  Penitentiary  was  as  follows: 


White 

Black 

Total 

Court  prisoners,  msJe 

144 

8 

141 

97 
4 
18 

241 

12 

Male  vagrants 

159 

334 

Average  number  in  hospital. 

In  fever  hospital  

Males.  In  quarry  

Cutting  stone 

Shoemakers   

Blacksmiths  

Carpenters  

Coopers  

Females.      Picking  oakum  

Sewing  and  spinning 

Kitchen .'. 


35  to 
31 
152 
14 
12 

7 
12 

6 
77 
40 
17 


40 


*  In  1921  renamed  Welfare  Island. 


288  History  of  American  Prisons 

Men  employed  in  various  kinds  of  labor  and  in  hospitals,  about 
75.  The  Penitentiary  was  a  place  of  punishment  for  crime;  a 
workhouse  for  idlers,  and  a  hospital  for  the  sick,  infirm  and  aged. 
The  chief  diseases  were  venereal  and  delirium  tremens.  The  keeper 
was,  in  1838,  Colonel  Jeremiah  Vanderbilt,  ''many  years  an  intelli- 
gent merchant  in  the  city  of  New  York,  a  member  and  officer  of  the 
Rutgers  Street  Church."  The  keeper  received  $1,000  per  annum, 
dwelling  on  the  Island  for  his  family,  and  free  use  of  all  stock  and 
products  of  the  Island.  He  was  appointed  by  the  common  council 
of  the  city.  The  hospital  and  the  prison  was  supplied  by  Doctor 
Nicholas  Morrell  at  a  salary  of  $630. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 


THE  REVEREND  LOUIS  DWIGHT 

We  have  repeatedly,  in  the  foregoing  chapters,  referred  to  the 
highly  influential  annual  reports  of  the  Prison  Discipline  Society  of 
Boston  from  1826  on,  and  to  the  controlling  spirit  that  produced 
them.  Louis  Dwight,  for  years  the  secretary  of  the  Prison  Disci- 
pline Society,  possessed  some  of  the  attributes  of  John  Howard  of 
England,  yet  unlike  that  eminent  prison  investigator,  he  was  not 
dispassionate,  not  judicial,  but  on  the  other  hand  was  possessed  of 
a  fighting  spirit  and  a  sense  of  organization  that  the  English 
reformer  never  exhibited.  Louis  Dwight  was  a  promoter  of  prison 
betterment,  a  missionary  in  heart,  and  an  impassioned  fighter  for 
what  he  believed  to  be  right. 

John  Howard  was  forced  into  his  great  philanthropic  service  by 
a  chance  appointment  as  sheriff  of  Bedford,  England,  which  led 
him  first  to  investigate  the  jail  under  his  charge,  and  then,  horror- 
stricken  by  his  discovery  of  local  conditions,  to  extend  ultimately 
his  investigations  to  the  entire  continent  of  Europe.  But  Dwight 
was  forced  into  his  American  prison  visiting  by  bad  health,  which 
incapacitated  him  for  a  pastorate,  and  also  by  an  intensely  religious 
nature,  that  led  him  to  say: 

*  *  I  had  rather  be  the  honored  instrument  of  turning  a  single  soul  free  from 
the  error  of  his  ways,  than  to  be  the  proud  monarch  of  the  universe.  I  had 
rather  be  immersed  in  prisons,  contending  against  sin,  than  to  receive  the 
honors  of  Lafayette/' 

Louis  Dwight  was  a  pioneer  in  American  prison  reform,  of  good 
New  England  stock,  and  of  stern  Puritan  morals,  born  of  highly 
devout  parents  in  1793.  He  was  faced  toward  the  ministry.  But 
a  hemorrhage  of  the  lungs,  caused  by  an  experiment  in  the  chemical 
laboratory  in  Yale  College  in  1813,  incapacitated  him  permanentlj' 
as  a  pulpit  speaker.  Nevertheless,  he  entered  the  ministry,  and 
became  first  the  agent  of  the  American  Bible  Society,  and  then  of 
the  American  Education  Society.  Compelled  in  1824,  by  feeble 
health,  to  give  up  this  work,  he  sought  by  long  journeys  on  horse- 
back to  recover  his  health.  In  order  to  serve  God  and  man,  he 
planned  to  distribute  Bibles  to  prisoners  on  his  route  —  an 
occupation  new  to  him. 

Thus  did  chance  lead  him  to  his  life  work.  His  horseback  journey 
through  the  South  Atlantic  States  in  1824  revealed  the  horrible  and 
unknown  conditions  of  jails  and  prisons.  His  first  missionary  act 
was,  at  the  New  Haven  jail,  to  comfort  by  prayer  and  counsel  a 
woman  condemned  to  death.  The  New  York  City  Bridewell  horri- 
fied him.  The  further  south  he  rode,  the  more  desperate  seemed 
the  conditions  met.     Prisoners  in  rags   and  chains;  sexes  com- 

[289] 
10 


290  History  of  American  Prisons 

mingled ;  mere  boys  the  victims  of  lecherous  men ;  debtors  impris- 
oned for  lack  of  payment  of  jailer's  fees;  squalor  beyond 
description  —  these  were  a  few  of  the  pictures  of  degradation  and 
misery  that  he  faced. 

"There  is  but  one  sufficient  excuse  for  Christians  in  suffering  such  evils 
to  exist  in  prisons  in  this  country,  and  that  is,  that  they  are  not  acquainted 
with  the  real  state  of  things.  .  *.  .  When  I  shall  bring  before  the  Church 
of  Christ  a  statement  of  what  my  eyes  have  seen,  there  will  be  a  united  and 
powerful  effort  to  alleviate  the  miseries  of  prisons.  ...  I  only  know  that 
these  prisoners  are  the  most  miserable  and  degraded  of  the  human  race,  and 
that  no  one  in  the  country  is  doing  anything  for  their  relief." 

Returning  to  Boston  in  1825,  Dwight  soon  founded  the  Prison 
Discipline  Society,  of  which  he  remained  the  militant  secretary 
until  his  death  in  1854,  after  which  the  Society  ceased  to  exist. 
This  Society  was  not  destined  to  be  simply  a  Boston  or  a  Massa- 
chusetts organization,  but  the  conception  in  Dwight 's  mind  was 
national,  and  in  the  earlier  years  of  his  secretaryship,  he  made 
many  efforts  to  cause  the  establishment  of  branches  of  the  ''work'* 
in  other  cities,  notably  in  Trenton,  New  Jersey,  and  at  one  time  in 
New  York  City.  But  these  local  developments  did  not  continue, 
and  when  in  1844  the  Prison  Association  of  New  York  was  founded, 
it  was  as  a  wholly  distinct  society  from  the  one  in  Boston. 

The  annual  reports  of  the  Boston  Society  were  Dwight 's  personal 
messages  to  this  country  and  to  Europe,  and  they  were  practically 
the  only  documents  of  the  kind  available.  They  carried  a  relatively 
large  amount  of  fact-information,  but  often  much  out  of  balance, 
particularly  in  relation  to  discussion  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary 
or  other  prisons  operating  on  the  ''separate"  system.  During 
many  months  of  each  year,  Dwight  was  separated  from  wife  and 
family,  on  his  visits  to  prisons,  and  at  one  time  he  wrote  to  his 
wife: 

**Let  us  hope  that  your  self-denial  in  giving  me  up,  to  continue  my  efforts 
in  that  which  is  bidden  me  to  do,  may  result  in  salvation  to  those  who  would 
otherwise  die  in  their  sins." 

His  salary  was  relatively  small,  and  out  of  it  he  had  to  pay  his 
own  traveling  expenses.  Seemingly,  he  never  spared  himself.  His 
physician  said  of  him,  after  his  death,  that  he  had  worked  too 
hard  in  his  day.  The  following  abstract  of  a  letter  of  Dwight  to 
his  daughter  from  Fairfield,  Connecticut,  written  on  January  6th, 
1830,  is  typical : 

"I  am  exceedingly  tired  to-night,  having  been  all  night,  on  Sabbath 
night;  most  of  the  night,  last  night;  all  day,  on  each  of  the  days,  for  three 
days  past,  in  the  cold,  travelling  over  rough  roads;  and  after  exploring 
several  towns  today,  with  the  commissioners  for  locating  the  workhouse,  I 
have  spent  the  evening  addressing  a  large  company  at  the  Courthouse,  so  that 
I  am  literally  exhausted.  Last  night  after  getting  into  the  house,  from  a 
cold  stage,  at  one  o'clock,  there  was  no  fire,  and  putting  on  a  buffalo  skin, 
I  could  not  get  warm." 

The  reports  of  the  Prison  Discipline  Society,  written  undoubtedly 
almost  if  not  quite  in  their  entirety  by  Dwight,  were  nevertheless 
wholly  impersonal  so  far  as  any  personal  aggrandizement  of  the 


History  of  American  Prisons  291 

man  was  concerned.  Rarely  do  we  discover  from  the  report  the 
evidences  of  the  constant  intense  activity  of  the  secretary.  Only 
occasionally  de  we  find  an  item  like  the  following,  in  the  report  for 
1829: 

**The  Society  sent  its  agent  at  three  different  times  to  Connecticut;  once 
to  visit  Newgate  Prison  alone,  and  ascertain  its  character;  again,  with  the 
Commissioners  of  the  Legislature  to  spend  as  much  time  as  should  be  neces- 
sary to  make  a  thorough  investigation,  and  disclosure  of  abuses  existing  in 
that  institution;  at  which  time,  after  spending  nearly  a  week  at  the  prison, 
he  visited  the  principal  towns  of  the  State  and  invited  meetings  of  the  prin- 
cipal men,  that  the  evils  might  be  exposed  to  them;  and,  also,  made  such 
representations  to  the  Governor  as  induced  him  to  submit  the  subject  to  the 
Legislature;  and,  finally,  in  acceptance  of  the  invitation  of  the  Commission- 
ers sent  its  agent  a  third  time,  to  appear  before  the  Legislature,  and  make 
such  representations  as  had  already  been  made  to  the  Governor  and  many 
respectable  citizens.  After  which,  within  two  or  three  weeks,  a  law  was  passed, 
with  almost  entire  unanimity,  to  abandon  Newgate,  and  build  a  new  prison 
on  the  Auburn  plan  at  Wethersfield. " 

Dwight's  monuments  are,  on  the  one  hand,  the  long  series  of 
annual  reports  of  the  Prison  Discipline  Society,  filled  with  notes 
and  facts  from  the  prisons  of  the  land,  the  county  jails,  the  local 
prisons ;  and  on  the  other,  the  constantly  growing  number  of  prisons 
built  on  the  Auburn  plan.  He  was  for  twenty  years  the  American 
authority  on  prisons  and  their  inmates.  Never  did  his  religious 
zeal  forsake  him.  He  was  engaged  in  a  holy  war.  The  salvation  of 
human  souls  was  the  impelling  force  within  him.  The  paralytic 
stroke  that  was  the  ultimate  cause  of  his  death  was  sustained  by 
him  while  in  harness.  Almost  the  last  act  of  his  long  life  was  a 
sermon  preached  to  the  insane  of  a  Boston  institution.  Throughout 
his  long  professional  career,  the  insane  were  special  objects  of  his 
compassion. 

His  daughter  said  that  he  was  perpetually  cheerful.  Friends 
described  him  as  affectionate,  kind,  of  pleasing  address,  faithful  to 
engagement,  frank,  sensitive,  and  of  strong  feelings.  He  was 
intensely  devout.  His  enemies  claimed  —  and  in  the  light  of  these 
later  years,  correctly  —  that  at  times  he  distorted  the  truth,  and 
misrepresented  facts.  It  was  this  failing  in  Louis  Dwight  that  stood 
in  the  way  of  his  becoming  a  great  man  in  his  profession.  Toward 
all  that  pertained  to  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  he  was  highly  biased, 
seemingly  incapable  of  calm  judgment,  and  he  was  persistently 
unfair,  although  his  motives  were  in  no  way  low  or  sordid,  or  for 
his  own  gain. 

At  the  very  end  of  the  period  that  we  have  been  considering  in 
this  study,  he  was  severely  arraigned  in  public  by  Charles  Sumner, 
of  his  own  Society,  for  the  distortion  and  suppression  of  facts 
regarding  the  Pennsylvania  system. 

Yet,  viewing  his  entire  span  of  activity,  he  served  valiantly  the 
cause  of  prison  reform.  Battling  against  the  constant  separation  of 
prisoners  from  each  other,  he  anticipated  the  trend  of  American 
prison  administration,  which  never  accepted  the  principle  of  separa- 


y 


292  History  of  American  Prisons 

tion  of  inmates.  To-day,  in  no  prison  of  the  country  is  the  original 
Pennsylvania  system  in  operation.  Honor  systems,  self-government 
efforts,  the  trainng  of  both  adult  and  youth,  occur  under  systems 
of  association  and  intercourse. 

Dwight  was  a  salient  figure  in  his  time,  the  forerunner  of 
Enoch  C.  Wines,  just  as  Amos  Pilsbury  was  the  forerunner  of 
Zebulon  R.  Brockway.  Dwight  has  failed  of  proper  recognition, 
and  is  hardly  mentioned  in  our  present  histories  of  the  period.  He 
\  contributed  largely  to  the  emancipation  of  poor  debtors  from  the 
i  liability  to  imprisonment.  He  fought  incessantly  for  the  removal 
of  the  insane  from  prisons  and  jails  to  proper  asylums.  *'He 
increased  the  security  of  society  from  the  misdeeds  of  criminals  by 
the  greatly  improved  plans  of  prisons  which  he  presented." 

The  influence  of  John  Howard's  example  upon  Dwight  is  clear. 
Dwight  abridged  and  published  Brown's  Memoirs  of  Howard  in 
1831.    In  1828,  Dwight  wrote  to  a  friend : 

"I  am  grateful  to  you  for  your  willingness  to  give  me  up  to  the  cause  of 
the  suffering  and  miserably  guilty  portion  of  our  race;  for  whom  there 
cannot  be  much  compassion,  and  for  whom  there  has  been  so  much  less  ex- 
ertion in  this  country  than  in  Europe." 


CHAPTER  XXIV 


THE  EARLY  JUVENILE  REFORMATORIES,  1824 — 1844 

NEW  YORK,  BOSTON,  PHILADELPHIA 

Inevitably,  in  the  development  of  more  humane  treatment  of 
criminals  and  other  law-breakers,  the  miserable  fate  of  the  children 
inprisoned  for  offenses  against  the  law  attracted  painfully  the 
philanthropic  attention  of  the  sponsors  of  the  newer  methods  of 
dealing  with  prisoners.  The  first  era  in  the  treatment  of  criminals 
by  systematic  methods  of  imprisonment,  the  Walnut  Street  era, 
with  its  imitators  in  other  States,  succeeded  in  establishing  only 
the  most  primitive  classification  of  prisoners,  though  it  was  recog- 
nized that  more  extended  classification  must  occur  than  the  simple 
separation  of  males  from  females,  or  felons  from  ''vagrants."  The 
first  era,  therefore,  hardly  did  more  than  put  the  felon  in  one 
institution,  the  State  prison,  and  retain  the  lesser  offenders  in  the 
houses  of  correction,  the  Bridewells  and  the  county  prisons.  And 
not  even  that  classification  was  carefully  carried  out.  So  that  at 
the  end  of  the  first  era,  in  the  early  twenties  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  with  the  almost  complete  breakdown  of  the  first  prison  sys- 
tem, the  State  prisons  still  contained  the  young  and  the  old,  the 
white  and  the  colored,  the  novice  and  the  old-timer.  Lodged  in 
large  rooms,  associating  promiscuously,  the  prisoners  were  inevit- 
ably steeped  in  the  habits  and  lore  of  crime. 

But  in  the  rapidly  growing  campaign  against  the  degenerated 
State  prisons,  a  new  note  was  struck,  one  that  had  not  been  heard 
when  Walnut  Street  was  the  prison  held  up  as  the  example  for 
the  world.  The  tender  years  of  many  of  the  prisoners  now  appalled 
the  prison  reformers.  Some  children  were  found  only  12  years  old, 
who  had  been  many  months  in  prison.^  Their  wretched  physical 
condition  and  their  fearful  moral  corruption  were  conspicuous  and 
horrid  facts: 

**The  loathsome  skin,  the  disturbed  features,  the  unnatural  eyes  of  some 
of  these  boys  indicated,  with  a  clearness  not  to  be  misapprehended,  the  ex- 
istence of  unutterable  abominations." 

In  the  Prison  Discipline  Society's  report  for  1827  appeared  the 
following  statistical  table : 

Proportion  of  Inmates  Under  21  Years  of  Age  in  Different 
State  Prisons 


Total  Prisoners 

Under  21 

Proportion  to 
Total 

_ 

116 
253 
534 
997 
211 

22 
47 
75 
148 
30 

lin5 

1  in  5 

Vermont . 

1  in  7 

line 

Richmond 

1  in  7 

1  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1827,  18. 


[293] 


294  History  of  American  Prisons 

There  was  no  unclearness  in  the  minds  of  the  philanthropists  of 
this  period  as  to  the  immeasurable  viciousness  for  the  young  of  the 
prison  surroundings.     Edward  Livingston  wrote  in  1822: 

*'It  would  be  more  reasonable  to  put  a  man  in  a  pest  house,  to  cure  him  of 
a  headache,  than  to  confine  a  young  offender  in  a  penitentiary,  organized  on 
the  ordinary  plan,  in  order  to  effect  his  reformation." 

It  was  in  New  York  City  that  the  first  organized,  constructive 
movement  to  solve  the  problem  of  the  juvenile  delinqueiits  devel- 
oped. There  met  at  the  home  of  Joseph  Curtis  in  the  winter  of 
1815-1816  some  fifteen  prominent  citizens,  who  resolved  to  investi- 
gate thoroughly  the  sources  of  crime  and  poverty.-  Out  of  this 
gathering  grew  the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Pauperism,  whose 
highly  important  report  in  1822  we  have  discussed  in  Chapter  Nine, 
in  treating  of  the  rise  of  the  Auburn  system. 

In  the  group  of  men  thus  gathered  together  were  Joseph  Griscom, 
a  professor  of  chemistry  and  natural  philosophy,  and  Thomas  Eddy, 
who  had  been  the  leading  spirit  in  the  establishment  of  the  State 
prison  (Newgate)  in  New  York  in  1796.  Griscom  made  in  1818- 
1819  a  tour  of  the  British  Isles  and  the  Continent,  giving  special 
attention  to  charitable  institutions.  He  found  in  England  that  in 
1817  there  had  been  founded  a  society  for  the  improvement  of 
prison  discipline  and  for  the  reformation  of  juvenile  depredators. 
A  juvenile  reformatory  of  this  Society  was  visited  by  Professor 
Griscom. 

It  was  an  asylum  for  the  children  of  convicts,  and  for  those 
children  who  had  been  trained  to  evil  courses.  Mechanical  trades 
were  taught.  Boys  and  girls  were  housed  in  separate  buildings. 
After  being  trained,  the  boys  were  bound  out  as  apprentices  for  a 
certain  number  of  years.  The  main  effort  of  the  asylum  was  indus- 
trial rather  than  scholastic.  At  a  suitable  age,  the  girls  were  also 
placed  out  at  service,  and  the  boys  were  sent  to  the  colonies  or 
to  America.  Unquestionably,  this  reformatory,  as  well  as  other 
European  juvenile  reformatories,  was  in  Griscom 's  memory,  when 
in  1819  the  young  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Pauperism  empha- 
sized the  lack  of  separation  of  adult  and  juvenile  offenders  in  the 
local  New  York  State  prison : 

**Here  is  one  great  school  of  vice  and  desperation;  with  confirmed  and 
unrepentant  criminals  we  place  these  novices  in  guilt;  these  unfortunate 
children,  from  ten  to  eighteen  years,  who  from  neglect  of  parents,  from  idle- 
ness or  misfortune,  have  been  doomed  to  the  penitentiary  by  condemnation 
of  law.     .     .     .     And  is  this  the  place  for  reform?"^ 

**WhOf  from  neglect  of  parents,  from  idleness  or  misfortune,  have 
been  doomed  .  .  ."  Thus  did  the  Society  for  the  Prevention 
of  Pauperism  recognize  and  proclaim  that  in  the  case  of  the  chil- 
dren, their  criminality  was,  to  a  considerable  extent,  the  result  of 
environmental  forces  beyond  their  own  control.  Society,  after 
contributing  by  its  own  actions  or  its  own  neglect  to  make  them 

^Memoir  of  Joseph  Curtis,  pp.  63ff. 
8  Half  Century,  etc.,  p.  39. 


History  of  American  Prisons  295 

criminal,  sent  them  to  prison,  to  be  exposed  to  '*a  fruitful  source 
of  pauperism,  a  nursery  of  new  vices,  a  college  for  the  perfection 
of  adepts  in  guilt. "  ^ 

Society's  propensity  to  help  in  rehabilitation  and  reformation 
seems  to  be  somewhat  in  proportion  to  the  degree  of  responsibility 
of  the  sufferer  or  the  victim.  The  last  to  enjoy  the  advantages  of 
reformatory  influences  in  prisons  have  been  those  deemed  fully 
responsible,  and  therefore  assumed  to  be  in  crime  through  delib- 
erate choice.  The  first  to  enjoy  the  aid  of  reformatory  methods  have 
been  those  who  have  appeared  least  responsible  for  their  plight  — 
the  children.  In  cognate  fields  of  philanthropy,  the  sick  have  been 
regarded  as  not  responsible  for  their  sickness,  and  therefore  the 
philanthropy  of  the  community  has  been  expended  upon  them. 
The  treatment  of  the  insane  changed  fundamentally,  as  the  con- 
ception grew  that  insanity  was  not  the  will  of  God,  but  a  grievous 
form  of  illness.  Diminished  responsibility  in  the  individual  has,  in 
short,  gradually  meant  increased  responsibility  of  society,  and 
to-day,  when  it  is  held  by  many  that  all  criminals  are  to  a  greater  or 
less  extent  the  victims  of  their  environment  and  their  own  physical 
and  mental  equipment,  the  natural  corollary  is  said  to  be  that  the 
prison  should  shoulder  an  increased  responsibility  for  their  redemp- 
tion and  their  rehabilitation. 

At  first,  the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Pauperism  recom- 
mended simply  a  division  of  the  inmate  population  of  the  State 
prison,  and  the  erection  of  a  separate  building  for  juveniles  within 
the  prison  enclosure  itself.  But  this  plan  was  not  long  urged. 
Other  suggestions  for  helping  delinquent  children  were  already 
current.  As  early  as  1803,  Edward  Livingston  had  addressed  a 
letter  to  the  Mechanics'  Society,  in  which  he  urged  them  to  found 
an  establishment  to  provide  work  for  the  discharged  and  pardoned 
convicts,  among  other  persons.  Thomas  Eddy  carried  this  idea 
over  into  a  plan  for  an  institution  for  young  discharged  convicts. 
Eddy  also,  during  the  years  when  the  plans  for  a  reformatory  for 
juvenile  delinquents  were  being  developed,  emphasized  the  necessity 
of  embodying  in  the  new  institution  preventive  as  well  as  curative 
methods. 

It  was  therefore  natural  that  by  1822  the  Society  for  the  Preven- 
tion of  Pauperism  should  urge  the  founding  of  a  juvenile 
reformatory,  to  which  children  might  be  sent  rather  than  to  State 
prison : 

"These  prisons  should  be  schools  of  instruction  rather  than  places  of 
punishment,  like  our  present  State  prisons.  The  youth  confined  there  should 
be  placed  under  a  course  of  discipline  severe  and  unchanging,  but  alike  cal- 
culated to  subdue  and  conciliate.  .  .  .  The  end  should  be  his  (the  youth's) 
reformation  and  future  usefulness." 

The  Society  appointed  a  committee,  of  which  James  W.  Gerard 
was  chairman,  to  report  on  the  feasibility  of  establishing  a  juvenile 
reformatory.^     The  committee,  after  study  of  all  sources  of  advice, 

*  Report  of  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Pauperism,  1821. 
"  Half  Century,  p.  44. 


296  History  of  American  Prisons 

both  American  and  foreign,  recommended  on  February  7,  1823, 
the  erection  of  a  building,  entirely  separate  from  the  State  Prison, 
for  the  imprisonment  of  young  oifenders  both  before  and  after  trial. 
The  proposed  house  of  refuge  should  also  be  the  place  of  refuge  for 
young  delinquents  after  discharge  from  prison.  Such  an  institution 
would  appeal  to  judges  and  jurors,  to  whom  the  thought  of  a  State 
prison  sentence  for  children  was  repugnant.  Between  one  hundred 
and  two  hundred  persons,  from  seven  to  fourteen  years  of  age, 
were  annually  brought  before  the  police  on  charges  involving 
various  degrees  of  crime. 

The  next  step  was  to  appoint  a  committee  to  prepare  a  plan  for 
the  '  *  house  of  refuge, ' '  and  Professor  Griscom  was  made  chairman 
of  the  committee.  Mindful  of  the  European  juvenile  asylums,  he 
said  that  such  an  institution  would  in  time  come  to  seem  simply 
a  decent  school  and  manufactory;  from  which  the  aspects  of  a 
prison  should  be  as  far  as  possible  removed.  All  the  groups  of 
citizens,  public  and  private  —  judges,  jurors,  juries,  district  attor- 
ney, and  philanthropists  were  enthusiastically  united  in  this  first 
civic  campaign  to  save  the  criminal  and  delinquent  children. 

At  a  meeting  on  December  19,  1823,  at  which  the  Griscom  report 
was  read,  $800  was  raised,  and  in  a  short  time  $18,000  was  secured 
from  private  subscriptions  —  the  first  instance  of  a  large  fund 
being  raised  from  citizens  for  institutional  prison  reform  for 
children.  So  important  was  the  movement,  and  so  keenly  did  the 
Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Pauperism  believe  that  the  chief 
cause  of  poverty  and  crime  was  to  be  found  in  the  delinquency 
of  childhood,  that  the  Society  was  reorganized  as  the  Society  for 
the  Reformation  of  Juvenile  Delinquents  * —  and  that  society  exists 
to-day,  and  still  conducts  the  House  of  Refuge  in  the  city  of  New 
York.  A  board  of  twenty-five  managers  was  appointed  until  the 
Society  should  be  incorporated,  which  occurred  on  March  29th, 
1824. 

The  State  then  conferred  upon  the  Society  for  the  Reformation 
of  Juvenile  Delinquents  powers  that  were  extraordinarily  broad.'^ 
Heretofore,  in  the  prison  field,  some  State,  county  or  municipal 
body  or  board  had  managed  the  correctional  institution.  But  now, 
there  was  given  over  to  a  private  group  the  power  of  imprisonment 
and  of  treatment.  The  Society  was  authorized  to  maintain  a  house 
of  refuge.  Legal  custody  of  the  inmates  was  given  to  the  Society, 
to  which  was  left  by  the  State  their  management  and  superintend- 
ence.^ The  ultimate  authority  lay  in  the  entire  body  of  subscribers, 
who  elected  the  board  of  managers,  thirty  in  number,  who  in  turn 
appointed  the  superintendent  and  other  officers  of  the  institution. 
The  managers  were  not  required  to  submit  to  State  authority 
beyond  the  filing  of  an  annual  report,  and  were  therefore  subject 
solely  to  the  control  of  public  opinion. 

8  Half  Century,  p.  63. 

"^  Act  of  Incorporation,  Chapter  126,  Laws  of  1824. 

8de  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  p.  110. 


History  of  American  Prisons  297 

Two  distinct  classes  of  inmates  were  to  be  received  by  the  Society : 
(a)  Those  children  convicted  and  sentenced  for  crime,  and  (b)  the 
children  who  were  not  convicted  of  crime,  but  who  were  destitute  or 
neglected,  or  both,  and  who  were  in  imminent  danger  of  becoming 
delinquent.  No  age  limit  was  set  for  admission,  but  boys  might 
not  be  held  by  the  managers  beyond  majority,  nor  girls  beyond 
the  age  of  eighteen  years.  The  institution  was  thus  to  be  curative, 
educational  and  preventive.  Commitments  to  the  House  of  Refuge 
might  be  made  by  police  courts,  those  of  special  or  general  sessions, 
or  by  the  commissioners  in  charge  of  the  Almshouse.  Boys  and 
girls  were  to  be  sent  to  the  House  of  Refuge  who  were  dangerous  to 
society  and  to  themselves;  orphans  who  were  vagrant,  children 
abandoned  by  their  parents  and  leading  a  disorderly  life.  In  short, 
all  those  who  would  infallibly  become  guilty  if  left  to  themselves.* 

It  is  of  special  interest  to-day,  a  century  later,  to  see  how,  in  the 
formation  of  this  first  House  of  Refuge,  the  founders  set  up  uner- 
ringly the  arguments  for  the  reformative  treatment  of  children  that 
fifty  years  later  were  set  forth  as  pertaining  to  young  men,  out 
of  which  agitation  developed  the  State  reformatory  system  of  this 
county,  initiated  at  Elmira.  And  now,  a  hundred  years  from  the 
time  of  the  founding  of  the  House  of  Refuge,  we  find  the  principles 
then  laid  down  as  applicable  to  children  largely  accepted  as  also 
applicable  to  a  considerable  proportion  of  the  population  of  the 
State  prisons  —  and  to-day  the  modern  State  prison  accepts  in  large 
measure  the  principles  of  treatment,  and  methods  of  discipline 
applied  a  century  ago  in  the  first  institution  for  delinquent  children. 

**In  most  instances  they  have  no  inveterate  habits  to  extirpate,"  wrote  the 
Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Pauperism  in  1822.  "No  moral  standard  of 
conduct  has  been  placed  before  their  eyes.  No  faithful  parent  has  watched 
over  them,  and  restrained  their  vicious  propensities.  Their  lives  exhibit  a 
series  of  aberrations  from  regularity,  a  train  of  accidents  that  has  rendered 
them  the  victims  of  temptations,  and  the  sport  of  adversity. 

**They  have  been  sent  from  place  to  place,  subsisted  by  various  means,  or 
been  left  to  combat  with  poverty,  want,  and  the  inclemency  of  the  seasons, 
by  the  exercise  of  their  own  ingenuity.  Everything  about  them  has  been 
various  and  unsettled,  and  in  the  unfortunate  hour  of  temptation,  while  under 
the  pressure  of  want,  they  have  offended  against  the  laws  and  been  sentenced 
to  the  State  prison.  There  are  exceptions  to  these  remarks,  in  a  few  solitary 
instances  of  premature  and  settled  baseness;  but  the  view  has  a  very  exten- 
sive application  to  the  cases  of  juvenile  offenders,  in  our  large  cities  and 
towns.    In  the  interior  it  is  very  rare  that  boys  are  indicted  for  crimes.  * ' 

The  wisdom  of  the  promoters  of  the  new  institution,  as  well  as 
that  of  the  law-making  body,  was  manifest  in  the  provision  of  law 
that  sentences  to  the  House  of  Refuge  should  be  indefinite,  and  not 
fixed.  That  is  to  say,  there  should  be  no  fixed  and  settled  limit  to 
the  sentence,  upon  the  termination  of  which  the  youth  should  be 
discharged.  The  fixed  sentence  was  characteristic  of  commitments 
to  the  State  prison,  and  in  general  of  all  commitments  of  adults. 
In  the  case  of  the  long  sentences  to  State  prison,  we  have  seen  the 
pardoning  power  operate  to  shorten  the  sentence,  and  we  have 
repeatedly  observed  in  this  study  that  the  long  sentence  to  prison 

9  de  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  p.  111. 


298  History  of  American  Prisons 

has  been  shortened  by  the  only  means  available  —  the  act  of  the 
chief  executive  of  the  State,  often  leading  to  flagrant  abuse  of  the 
power  of  pardon. 

But  now,  for  the  children,  a  revolutionary  step  was  being  taken. 
These  same  children,  if  sentenced  to  prison  or  jail,  would  receive 
a  fixed  sentence.  But  since  the  House  of  Refuge  was  to  educate 
children  for  an  honest  life,  and  teach  them  a  trade,  it  was  essential 
that  they  should  be  retained  long  enough  in  this  school  to  learn  the 
trade,  at  least  to  the  extent  of  being  equipped  to  be  apprenticed  out 
to  their  masters  for  the  period  of  their  minority. 

The  decision,  therefore,  by  which  children  were  committed  to 
the  House  of  Refuge  had  generally  neither  the  solemnity  nor  the 
forms  of  a  judgment.  The  court  simply  committed  the  delinquent 
to  the  House  of  Refuge,  which  from  that  moment  acquired  all  the 
powers  of  a  guardian. ^^  This  guardianship  endured  only  through 
the  minority  of  the  child.  The  charter  of  the  Society  required  that 
the  rules  and  regulations  of  the  Society  should  not  be  inconsistent 
with  the  Constitution  of  the  State  and  Nation.  Through  the  power 
of  habeas  corpus  the  courts  might  inquire  into  the  commitment  and 
detention  of  any  child.  The  managers  had  the  right  to  restore  to 
liberty  any  inmate  at  any  time. 

Even  after  the  managers  had  indentured  a  child,  they  still 
retained  the  legal  right  to  recall  the  child  to  the  institution  and  to 
employ  most  rigorous  means,  if  necessary,  in  so  doing.  In  short, 
there  was  given  to  the  Society  the  power  of  parent,  together  with 
disciplinary  means  to  achieve  the  difficult  task  of  reformation  and 
control  of  juvenile  character.  It  should  be  noted  that  the  Society 
had  thus  not  only  the  advantage  of  the  indeterminate  sentence, 
bu  also  what  in  later  years  was  the  power  of  parole  (in  the  case 
of  the  House  of  Refuge  called  ''indenture"),  with  which  was 
coupled  the  power  of  return  to  the  institution,  as  in  the  case  of 
parole  in  later  years. 

It  was  natural  that  in  the  early  years  of  the  institution  vigorous 
protest  should  have  been  made  against  the  employment  of  such 
drastic  power  by  a  private  body.  Only  the  highly  intelligent  hand- 
ling of  a  new  enterprise,  based  upon  the  most  humane  motives, 
enabled  the  managers  of  the  House  of  Refuge  to  continue  to  com- 
mand the  support  of  public  opinion.  It  was  claimed  that  their 
power  was  contrary  to  the  constitution  of  the  United  States;  that 
the  power  of  the  managers  to  shorten  or  to  prolong,  at  their 
pleasure,  the  duration  of  detention  of  the  youthful  inmates  was 
arbitrary,  and  should  not  be  tolerated. 

The  status  of  the  House  of  Refuge  in  the  correctional  system  of 
the  State  was  interpreted  in  citations  from  the  annual  report  of 
the  House  of  Refuge  of  1839,  when  two  decisions  were  quoted,  one 
relative  to  the  House  of  Refuge  of  Philadelphia  (a  similar  institu- 
tion), and  the  other  a  decision  rendered  —  probably  in  a  matter  of 
the  same  institution  —  which  affirmed  that  the  House  of  Refuge 
was  not  a  prison  but  a  school.^*^    Reformation  and  not  punishment 

10  Supreme  Court  of  Pennsylvania,  December  Term,  1838. 
"  B.  and  T.,  p.  112. 


History  of  American  Prisons  299 

was  the  aim  of  the  institution.  The  court  recognized  the  position 
of  the  House  of  Refuge  as  *' parens  patriae/'  the  "common  guar- 
dian of  the  community."  The  right  of  parental  control  —  which 
some  of  the  plaintiffs  claimed  probably  was  paramount  —  the  court 
held  to  be  a  natural  right,  but  not  an  inalienable  one.  Not  only 
was  the  restraint  of  the  person  of  the  child  committed  to  the  House 
of  Refuge  lawful,  but  the  court  held  that  it  would  be  an  act  of 
extreme  cruelty  to  release  the  child  to  improper  parents. 

The  second  decision  quoted  ^^*  held  that  the  greater  or  less  degree 
of  restraint  which  was  imposed  by  the  superintendent  must  depend 
upon  circumstances  and  could  not  be  made  the  subject  of  any 
precise  estimate.  So  long  as  it  was  governed  by  a  regard  for  the 
best  interests  of  the  young,  it  had  perhaps  no  other  limits,  and  must 
be  discretionary. 

In  short,  the  Houses  of  Refuge  in  New  York  and  Philadelphia 
were  an  entirely  new  type  of  educational  correctional  institution. 
In  theory,  and  to  considerable  extent  in  methods,  they  differed 
from  the  prisons,  in  protest  against  which  they  had  their  origin. 
The  chief  differences  may  thus  be  summarized: 

House  of  Rbfugb.  State  Prison. 

Policy Reformative  and  Educational Punitive. 

Population Children Adults  and  children. 

Degree  of  Crime Any  delinquents Felons. 

Ages Maximum,  boys  21,  girls  18,  no  minimum No  limit. 

Sentences No  minimum.     Maximum  boys  21,  girls  18 . . .  No  limit. 

Nature  of  sentences . . .  Indefinite Definite. 

Method  of  release . .   . .  Indenture  ....'• Discharge. 

Nature  of  release Provisional  during  good  conduct Absolute. 

Supervision  after  release  Correspondence  with  employers,  visits None. 

Power  of  recall Yes No. 

Government Private  board Public  board. 

How  appointed Self-perpetuating Legislature  or  Governor. 

The  New  York  House  of  Refuge  was  the  first  of  its  kind  to  be 
established  in  America  or  Europe.^^  The  juvenile  asylums  estab- 
lished earlier  in  Europe  received  children  not  by  court  commitment, 
but  through  voluntary  applications  and  admissions.  Therefore,  the 
early  European  reformatories  failed  to  possess  such  broad  powers 
as  did  the  American  House  of  Refuge. 

A  location  was  granted  by  the  city  of  New  York  at  the  junction 
of  the  Bloomingdale  Road  and  the  Old  Post  Road,  where  now 
Madison  Square  is  located.  This  site  of  four  acres  was  about  one 
mile  north  of  the  then  habitable  portion  of  the  city,  and  two  miles 
from  city  hall.^^  Federal  government  buildings  used  as  barracks 
were  ceded  and  then  renovated.  On  January  1,  1825,  six  boys 
and  three  girls  were  received  as  the  first  inmates. 

From  the  outset,  the  Refuge  engaged  strong  public  approval. 
Within  a  year  from  the  opening,  the  city's  district  attorney  stated 
that  its  influence  was  most  benign  in  the  diminution  of  the  number 
of  juvenile  delinquents.  The  most  depraved  boys  had  been  with- 
drawn from  the  haunts  of  vice.    In  1825,  Governor  Clinton  stated 

"a  Opinion  of  J.  R.  IngersoU,  Washington,  January  7,  1835. 
"  Half  Century,  p.  68. 
"  Half  Century,  p.  72. 


300  History  of  American  Prisons 

in  his  message  to  the  Legislature  that  the  House  of  Refuge  was  the 
best  penitentiary  institution  that  had  ever  been  devised  by  the 
wit  of  man,  and  established  by  his  beneficence. 

A  field  without  precedent  lay  before  the  first  superintendent,  who 
was  Joseph  Curtis,  the  New  York  citizen  in  whose  house  had  met 
nearly  ten  years  previously  the  little  group  of  men  to  discuss  the 
treatment  of  poverty  and  crime.  Curtis  was  a  man  quite  out  of  the 
ordinary.  We  find  at  the  outset,  in  charge  of  the  House  of  Refuge, 
a  man  who  sought  to  introduce  the  methods  of  love  and  kindness 
into  what  had  been  a  system  of  horrible,  cruel  treatment  of  children 
in  the  prisons.  A  little  biography  of  the  man,  Joseph  Curtis, 
published  in  1858,^*  called  him  a  ' '  model  man. ' '  Under  him, ' '  order 
was  the  first  law  of  the  institution ;  unswerving  justice  was  main- 
tained and  love  was  the  keynote. ' '  ^^ 

The  methods  of  Curtis  were  those  of  rewards  and  deprivations, 
and  his  treatment  was  based  on  personality.  His  appeal  was  to  the 
human  nature  and  the  natural  emotions  of  the  children.  To  those 
children  for  instance,  who  had  been  good  throughout  the  week,  he 
gave  cake  and  coffee  on  Sunday  morning  at  eleven.  Any  boy  that 
finished  his  work  by  Saturday  noon  in  summer  could  go  for  a  swim 
and  have  the  afternoon  at  liberty.  A  former  pupil,  writing  many 
years  afterwards  about  his  former  superintendent,  said  that  in  no 
case  did  an  escape  occur,  under  such  circumstances.^*  Any  boy 
that  behaved  particularly  well  was  allowed  to  go  *'to  the  city^*  to 
visit  his  friends.  If  a  boy  ran  away,  but  came  back  of  his  own  free 
will,  he  was  forgiven. 

During  the  play  hours,  Curtis  would  romp  with  the  children,  play 
baseball  with  them,  make  kites,  play  marbles,  and  run  with  the 
little  inmates.^^  But  at  table  they  must  be  silent,  holding  up  a 
hand  if  they  wanted  water,  a  thumb  for  vinegar,  three  fingers  for 
bread,  and  one  finger  for  salt.  In  the  long  winter  evenings,  narra- 
tives would  be  read,  and  there  would  be  singing  and  the  telling  of 
stories.  Seated  around  a  long  table,  the  children  might  ask  him 
questions  on  any  subjects  occurring  to  them.^ 

Yet  Curtis  was  tenacious  in  disciplining  when  he  believed  it  to 
be  necessary.  A  form  of  mutual  disciplining  was  invented  whereby 
the  boys  tried  each  other  by  jury,  Curtis  being  the  judge.  Each 
boy  made  his  complaint,  and  if  the  one  complained  of  was  found 
guilty,  the  number  of  stripes  was  named  by  the  foreman  of  the 
jury  and  Curtis  administered  the  punishment.^^  Corporal  punish- 
ment was  highly  distasteful  to  him,  but  principle  was  all-governing. 

The  former  inmate,  whom  we  have  already  mentioned,  wrote  of 

Curtis : 

**Many  a  time,  at  midnight,  have  I  seen  the  good  Samaritan  with  noiseless 
tread  move  from  couch  to  couch,  bathing  a  heated  forehead,  here  moistening 

"  Memoir  of  Joseph  Curtis.    C.  M.  Sedgwick,  N.  Y.,  1858. 

«  Memoir  of  Joseph  Curtis,  p.  66. 

"  Same,  p.  72. 

"  Same,  p.  80. 

18  Same,  p.  88. 

i»  Same,  p.  70. 


History  of  American  Prisons  301 

the  parched  lips  and  fevered  tongue  of  another,  and  all  with  a  gentleness 
unsurpassed  hj  women 's  gentleness. ' '  ** 

Yet  the  superintendency  of  Curtis  lasted  hardly  more  than  a 
year.  It  was  an  intensely  personal  administration.  His  chronicler 
stated  that  the  break  came  between  Curtis  and  the  board  of  man- 
agers when  he  refused  to  lash  a  boy  who  had  run  away  and  had 
voluntarily  returned.  Though  the  board  yielded  to  Curtis 's 
position,  the  strained  relations  led  to  his  resignation  in  May,  1826. 

The  board  of  managers  wanted  to  see  a  definite  system  of  rules 
and  regulations  established  and  administered.  According  to  a 
narrative  of  the  first  fifty  years  of  the  House  of  Ref uge,^^  the  year 
of  Curtis 's  superintendency  was  marked  by  restlessness  and  efforts 
to  escape,  and  a  constant  guard  was  rendered  necessary.  This  was 
said  to  be  due  to  the  miscellaneous  nature  of  the  daily  work,  which 
was  indefinite  and  unsystematic.  It  was  said  that  *'the  most  conspic- 
uous items  in  the  first  volume  of  the  daily  journal  were  those 
relating  to  attempted  or  successful  escapes. ' '  ^ 

But  Curtis  maintained  that  the  institution  could  not  be  managed 
like  a  factory. 

"Many  things  may  be  done  that  to  a  casual  observer  may  seem  inadmissible, 
but  still,  rightly  managed,  are  productive  of  good.'' 

The  case  of  Joseph  Curtis  was  of  a  social  significance  far  greater 
than  could  be  appreciated  at  the  time.  He  seems  to  have  instituted 
a  theory  of  administration  that  would  subordinate  system  to  per- 
sonality, as  a  method  of  education.  He  chose  by  far  the  harder 
method,  but  the  one  offering  the  possibility  of  rich  rewards.  He 
aimed  to  develop  the  individuality  of  the  child,  bring  out  his  powers 
of  self-expression.  He  believed  in  the  development  of  character 
rather  than  routine.  He  made  his  board  of  managers  nervous,  just 
as  all  other  executives  of  institutions  who  have  adopted  insurgent 
or  novel  methods  have  made  boards  of  managers  very  nervous.  We 
have  but  to  think  back,  in  this  study,  to  Caleb  Lownes  and  his 
colleagues,  and  the  earliest  days  of  Walnut  Street  Prison,  when, 
for  a  few  years,  a  most  humane  discipline  excited  the  admiration 
of  visitors.  But  it  failed,  shortly,  and  severer  methods  came  in. 
We  recall  Warden  Goodell,  at  Auburn  Prison,  whose  mild  and 
individualistic  methods  brought  about  alleged  restlessness  and 
trouble  among  the  inmates.  We  saw  Amos  Pilsbury  chided  by  a 
Legislative  committee  for  trusting  prisoners  outside  of  Wethersfield, 
in  the  earliest  days.  And,  shortly,  we  shall  see  the  superintendent 
of  the  Boston  House  of  Reformation  in  a  still  more  daring  effort  to 
normalize  the  education  of  childhood,  and  the  reaction  of  those  in 
authoritj^  to  his  methods. 

Honor  systems,  self-government  methods,  and  any  other  innova- 
tions in  correctional  institutions  have  had  to  fight  for  their 
continued  existence.  It  has  been  characteristic  that  coupled  with 
the  development  of  methods  of  fostering  self-expression  and  individ- 

20  Memoir,  p.  91. 

21  Half  Century,  p.   87. 

22  Same,  p.  87. 


302  History  of  American  Prisons 

ual  treatment  has  gone  often  a  certain  temperamental  attitude  of 
mind  in  the  executive,  because  of  which  strained  relations  have 
shortly  developed  between  the  controlling  body  and  the  executive. 
The  controlling  body  —  board  of  managers,  common  council,  Gover 
nor  —  have  wanted  regularity,  system,  something  applying  to  all 
inmates,  something  making  for  efficient  routine,  something  measur- 
able, easily  understood,  ''normal."  The  insurgent  executive  has 
wanted  the  power  to  deal  with  all  cases  individually,  set  up  inno- 
vations, perform  experiments,  often  without  having  the  foresight 
to  recognize  the  inevitable  difficulties  in  an  institution  filled  with 
inmates  not  gifted  in  logic,  but  strong  in  emotional  and  illogical 
state  of  mind. 

To  Joseph  Curtis,  family  life  and  the  rule  of  a  loving  but  deter- 
mined pater  familias  were  the  chief  desiderata  in  institutional 
management  of  children.  ' '  Institutionalism, "  as  this  condition  of 
systematic  and  monotonous  adherence  to  rules  is  termed  that 
governs  most  easily  the  greatest  number,  was  evidently  objectionable 
to  Curtis. 

We  would  here  deviate  from  the  chronological  history  of  the 
early  years  of  the  House  of  Refuge  in  New  York,  to  outline  a 
similar  but  even  more  striking  career  of  a  "personality"  at  the 
hedd  of  the  House  of  Reformation  in  Boston,  in  the  person  of  the 
Reverend  E.  M.  P.  Wells,  a  young  Episcopal  minister.  In  1826, 
the  Massachusetts  Legislature  gave  to  the  Boston  city  council 
authority  to  send  juvenile  delinquents,  who  under  the  former  law 
had  been  committed  to  State  prison,  to  such  an  institution  as  the 
council  should  provide  at  South  Boston,^^  about  two  and  one-half 
miles  from  the  city.  A  commodious  building  was  provided  in  an 
extensive  field  of  from  30  to  40  acres.  The  government  of  the 
House  of  Reformation  was  by  a  board  of  seven  directors,  and  the 
city  of  Boston  assumed  entire  support  of  the  institution,  thus 
making  it  a  public  reformatory,  in  contrast  to  the  privately 
managed  House  of  Refuge  in  New  York. 

There  came  to  the  Boston  House  of  Reformation  as  superintend- 
ent in  1826,  the  above-mentioned  Mr.  Wells,  a  serious  episode  in 
his  college  career  at  Brown  College  throwing  light  undoubtedly  on 
his  attitude  toward  the  little  inmates  of  the  House  of  Reformation 
over  which  he  was  to  preside.  While  a  student  at  Brown,  he  was 
called  before  the  faculty  to  give  information  as  to  the  participants 
in  a  student  prank  of  some  magnitude.  He  stated  that  he  had  not 
taken  part  in  it.  When  he  refused  to  give  the  names  of  the  partici- 
pants —  among  whom  was  his  own  roommate  —  he  was  threatened 
with  expulsion,  and  on  still  refusing  to  bear  witness  against  his 
college  mates,  he  was  expelled.  In  later  years.  Brown  gave  him 
an  A.  M.  degree,  probably  in  part  atonement  for  the  college 's  harsh 
action  toward  him. 

One  of  the  rules  of  the  House  of  Reformation,  under  Wells,  was 
that  no  boy  should  be  required  to  give  information  of  the  faults  of 
another,  nor  should  he  be  allowed  to  do  so,  unless  he  was  apparently 

23  B.  p.  D.  S.,  1826,  p.  47. 


History  of  American  Prisons  303 

conscientious  in  so  doing. ^*  Thus  did  one  of  the  earliest  reform 
schools  go  on  record  as  intolerant  of  ''snitching,"  and  of  govern- 
ment through  stool-pigeons. 

This  rule  was,  however,  but  one  of  a  series  of  remarkably  enlight- 
ened regulations,  which  placed  the  House  of  Reformation  in  Boston 
temporarily  at  the  forefront  of  American  institutions  in  the  matter 
of  insurgent  administrative  methods.  The  young  clergyman's 
philosophy  of  boyhood  was  the  following: 

''Most  people  imagine,  when  they  see  or  hear  of  bad  boys,  that  they  are  a 
worse  kind  of  boys,  worse  by  nature  than  others.  If  my  observations  be  of 
any  value  on  this  subject,  it  is  not  so,  for  though  at  first  there  be  strong 
sproutings  of  evil  principle  and  passion  to  be  lopped  off,  we  often  find  him 
as  good  a  stock,  and  as  rich  a  soil,  as  in  other  cases.  .  .  .  However  bad  a 
boy  may  be,  he  can  always  be  reformed  while  he  is  under  fifteen  years  of  age, 
and  very  often  after  that  age;  and  he  who  has  been  reckoned  and  treated 
as  incapable  of  anything  like  honesty  and  honor,  may  be  worth  the  most 
entire  confidence.  .  .  .  We  live  happily  together  as  a  family  of  brethren, 
cheerful,  happy,  confiding,  and,  I  trust,  to  a  greater  or  less  degree  pious. ''*^ 

The  administrative  methods  of  the  Boston  House  of  Reformation 
were  amazingly  enlightened  in  a  period  when  repressive  and  even 
punitive  treatment  of  children  would  have  been  natural,  and  easily 
justified  by  the  public  customs  and  opinion  of  the  time.  But 
corporal  punishments  were  entirely  excluded  from  the  House.  By 
vote  of  the  children,  one  after  the  other  of  the  instruments  of 
physical  punishment  had  been  abandoned,  and  last  of  all  the  ferule, 
and  they  offered  as  a  substitute  their  own  word  of  honor  to  behave."* 
The  children,  said  de  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  who  visited  the 
institution,  were  treated  by  the  superintendent  as  though  they  were 
members  of  a  free  society .^^  Nobody  in  the  House  could  be  pun- 
ished for  a  fault  not  provided  for  by  divine  law,  or  by  those  of 
the  country  or  of  the  House  itself.  Nobody  should  be  punished  for 
a  fault  sincerely  avowed.  A  book  of  conduct  was  kept,  in  which 
each  child  had  his  account  of  good  and  bad  marks,  and  each  child, 
at  the  close  of  the  day,  in  the  evening  assembly,  was  called  upon 
to  judge  himself,  and  to  assign  his  own  marks  of  merit  or  demerit. 

It  was  stated  by  the  French  observers  that  the  children  always 
judged  themselves  more  severely  than  they  would  be  judged  by 
others,  and  that  not  infrequently  the  marks  had  to  be  corrected.^* 
Twelve  little  jurymen,  from  among  the  children,  pronounced  con- 
demnation or  acquittal  of  the  accused,  in  cases  of  morality  or  other 
offenses.  The  children  elected  their  own  monitors,  and  nothing  was 
said  to  be  more  serious  than  the  manner  in  which  these  electors 
and  jurymen  discharged  their  function. 

Children  whose  conduct  was  good  enjoyed  great  privileges.  The 
system  of  gradation  provided  for  three  '*Mal  Grades"  and  three 
* '  Bon  Grades. ' '     The  classification  was  as  follows :  ^^ 

2*  B.  and  T.,  p.  119. 

25  Mary  Carpenter,  "  Juvenile  Delinquents,"  London,  1853,  p.  212. 

2«  Memoir,  p 

^  B.  and  T..  p.  118. 
28  Same,  p.  119. 
20  Same,  Appendix. 


304  History  of  American  Prisons 

First  Mai  Grade:     Those  who  are  positively  inclined  to  do  wrong. 
Privations  : 

1.  Deprived    of   play    and   conversation,    except   with    members   of   the 

same  grade,  or  when  necessary,  with  those  with  whom  they  work. 

2.  Not  to  go  to  superintendent's  room. 

3.  Not  to  vote  at  elections. 

Second  Mai  Grade:     Those  positively  and  regularly  inclined  to  do  wrong. 
Privations : 

1.  Those  of  First  Mai  Grade. 

2.  Not  to  converse  with  any  boys,  except  when  necessary  about  their 

work. 

3.  Not  to  speak  to  superintendent  except  when  permitted. 

4.  Deprived    of    regular    seat,    and   kept   constantly    under    an    inmate 

sheriff,    and    never    dismissed    from    such    surveillance    except    in 
bedrooms. 

5.  Deprived  of  cake  and  other  extra  food. 

Third  Mai   Grade:     Positively,   regularly   and   continually   inclined   to   do 
wrong. 
Privations : 

1.  Those  of  First  and  Second  Mai  Grades. 

2.  Food:     Bread  and  water.     Must  wear  bracelets  or  a  visor,  and  be 

kept  in  solitary  room. 

Thus,  in  descending  scale,  was  discipline  sought  by  a  systematic 
withdrawal  of  privileges,  until  the  limit  of  such  privileges  was 
reached,  and  positive  punishments,  but  not  of  a  corporal  nature, 
were  administered.  The  salient  and  fundamentally  important 
feature  of  the  gradations  was  that  it  was  optional  with  the  inmate 
whether  he  ascended  or  descended.  Had  a  superior  authority 
arbitrarily  imposed  the  punishments  or  deprivations,  the  rebellious 
and  emotional  spirit  of  the  child  could  have  secured  foothold  for 
the  nourishing  of  a  sense  of  injustice  or  of  martyrdom.  Punish- 
ments under  such  conditions  could  be  but  the  forerunners  of 
rebellion  or  of  a  permanently  anti-social  spirit. 

On  the  other  hand,  under  the  above  methods,  not  only  was  the 
sense  of  justice  but  of  personal  interest  appealed  to,  and  responsi- 
bility was  shifted  entirely  to  the  young  inmate  himself.  If  he  was 
bad,  it  was  because  he,  knowing  the  consequences,  chose  the  bad, 
and  not  because  it  was  forced  upon  him  by  the  administration. 
The  spirit  of  the  place  was  based  upon  the  knowledge  and  anticipa- 
tion of  the  pleasures  awaiting  the  one  who  maintained  good  conduct, 
privileges  ever  before  the  inmate  of  the  so-called  ''Bon  Grades,'* 
of  which  the  following  are  a  summary: 

Third  Bon  Grade:     Positively  to  do  right. 
Privileges : 

1.  Any  that  the  Mai  Grades  offer. 

2.  To  go  to  the  city  under  a  monitor,  when  25  marks  have  been  acquired^ 

3.  To  walk  about  grounds,  under  a  monitor. 

4.  To  go  to  gymnasium  and  reading  room. 

5.  To  use  the  books  and  papers  in  the  assembly  room,  by  permission. 

6.  To  hold  offices,  by  election. 

Second  Bon  Grade :     Positively  and  regularly  trying  to  do  right. 
Privileges : 

1.  Privileges  of  all  previous  grades. 

2.  To  go  to  the  city,  for  twenty-five  marks  acquired,  without  monitor,  if 

it  is  the  third  time. 


History  of  American  Prisons  305 

3.  To  be  entrusted  with  keys  of  secondary  importance. 

4.  Capable  of  holding  offices  of  appointment. 

5.  Permitted  to  take  books  from  the  reading  room. 

6.  Also  to  use  papers  in  assembly  room,  without  permission. 

7.  Other  things  being  equal,  to  have  preference  before  all  inferior  grades. 

First  Bon  Grade:     Positively  regularly  and  continually  trying  to  do  right. 
Privileges : 

1.  Those  of  all  previous  grades. 

2.  To  walk  about  the  stockade  without  a  monitor;   to  sail  and  swim 

without  monitor. 

3.  To  go  to  one's  room  without  permission,  and  into  dining  room  when 

necessary. 

4.  To  leave  one's  seat  in  the  assembly  room  without  permission. 

5.  Other  things  being  equal,  to  have  preference  before  all  lower  grades, 

6.  To  have  the  use  of  the  recreation  room. 

7.  To  be  entrusted,  when  necessary,  with  the  most  important  keys. 

8.  To  have  one's  word  taken  on  all  common  occasions. 

9.  To  have  one's  birthday  celebrated. 
10.  To  wear  undress  uniform. 

It  was  made  easy  to  the  bad  inmate  to  begin  to  climb  back  up 
the  ladder  of  conduct  into  the  better  grades,  but  the  higher  he 
climbed  the  harder  it  was  made  for  him  to  go  higher.  In  other 
words,  promotions  from  grade  to  grade  were  possible,  as  follows: 

Minimum  Stay  in  Same,  Before  Pro- 
Grades,  motion  to  Next  Higher  Grade. 

Third  Mai  to  Second  Mai One  Day. 

Second  Mai  to  First  Mai One  Day. 

First  Mai  to  Third  Bon One  Week. 

Third  Bon  to  Second  Bon Two  Weeks. 

Second  Bon  to  First  Bon Four  Weeks. 

Demotions  from  grade  to  grade  might  occur  at  any  time,  by  the 
attaining  of  a  certain  number  of  bad  marks. 

At  the  very  entrance  into  the  House  by  the  new  inmate,  the 
self-government  features  of  the  establishment  were  apparent. 
After  the  customary  physical  examination,  bath,  etc.,  the  newcomer 
was  introduced  to  the  other  lads,  and  received  a  copy  of  the 
**Laws,"  if  he  could  read.  He  was  then  placed  in  the  Second  or 
Third  Mai  Grade,  where  he  remained  for  a  week  on  probation.  If 
his  conduct  was  good  during  this  period,  it  was  so  reported  to  the 
boys,  and  a  vote  was  then  taken  as  to  whether  he  should  be  received 
into  the  community.  If  one  inmate  of  the  First  Bon  Grade,  two 
inmates  of  the  two  highest  Bon  Grades,  four  of  the  first  three 
Grades,  or  five  inmates  altogether  voted  against  the  newcomer,  he 
was  sent  back  into  further  probation.  If  he  was  a  lad  of  peculiar 
circumstances,  extra  age,  or  one  committed  from  the  municipal 
court,  he  was  kept  in  solitary  confinement  one  or  more  weeks  before 
being  presented  to  the  other  boys.  If  the  conduct  of  a  community 
member  were  extraordinarily  bad,  he  was  expelled  from  the 
community,  and  could  be  readmitted  only  after  a  period  of 
probation. 

Monitors  were  appointed  from  among  the  boys  at  the  beginning 
of  each  month,  and  the  head  monitor  presided  over  the  institution 
in  the  absence  of  the  ofiicers.    There  were  thus  two  inmate  keepers 


306  .  History  of  American  Prisons 

of  the  keys  of  the  institution,  who  rang  the  bells  and  opened  and 
shut  the  doors.  There  was  an  inmate  sheriff  and  two  sheriffs^ 
deputies,  to  take  charge  of  the  second  and  third  ''Mai  Grades.'' 
One  of  these  three  officers  must  be  always  on  duty,  except  during 
the  institutional  sleeping  hours;  there  was  an  inmate  steward  who 
should  attend  to  the  marketing,  the  boys '  meals,  and  the  provisions  ; 
there  was  also  a  monitor  of  police,  who  was  to  have  two  or  three 
boys  under  him,  to  clean  and  arrange  each  day  the  boys'  part  of 
the  house.  Other  monitors  were  those  of  the  wardrobe,  of  the 
rooms,  of  the  floors.  The  monitors  of  divisions  and  of  the  First 
Grade  were  elected  by  the  boys  of  such  divisions,  and  conducted  the 
divisions  at  all  marching  times,  and  saw  that  their  personal 
appearance  was  satisfactory. 

Wells'  policy  of  emphasis  on  physical  development,  and  on 
academic  training,  to  an  extent  not  found  in  the  Houses  of  Refuge 
of  New  York  and  Philadelphia,  was  manifest  in  the  daily  schedule 
of  hours  :^ 

6.00-  6.45 Eecreation. 

6.45-  7.30   Religious  Exercises. 

7.30-  8.00 Breakfast. 

8.00-10.00 School. 

10.00-12.45    Labor. 

12.45-  1.30 Recreation. 

1.30-  2.00 Dinner. 

2.00-  4.45 Labor. 

4.45-  5.30 Recreation. 

5.30-  6.00   Supper. 

6.00-  8.00   School. 

8.00-  8.30   Religious  Exercises. 

8.30-  9.30 Going  to  Bed. 

The  time  of  rising  was  naturally  earlier  in  summer  than  in  winter. 

The  daily  schedule  thus  gave  5%  hours  to  labor,  4  hours  to  school, 
21/4  hours  to  recreation,  and  1%  hours  to  meals.  Religious  exercises 
consumed  ll^  hours.  The  day  time  was  divided  fairly  equally 
between  labor  and  academic  instruction.  The  school  gave  mainly 
primary  school  subjects  and  the  manual  labor  was  much  the  same 
as  in  prison,  save  as  to  quantity  and  intensity .'^^  In  the  games, 
Wells  took  part,  believing  that  physical  and  moral  qualities  arose 
from  such  sports. 

Having  read,  for  several  hundred  pages  of  this  study  of  the 
persistent  application  in  the  early  American  prisons  of  repressive 
and  cruel  measure  of  discipline,  we  naturally  ask  ourselves  how 
this  very  radical  plan  of  Wells  was  regarded  by  his  contemporaries. 
De  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville,  expressing  keen  interest  in  this 
experiment,  stated  that  they  did  not  regard  it  as  an  infant  republic 
in  good  earnest.^  The  system  seemed  to  them,  however,  to  be 
remarkable  in  its  originality.  They  stated  that  there  was  more 
depth  in  these  political  plays,  which  agreed  so  well  with  the  institu- 
tions of  the  country,  than  would  be  supposed  at  first  glance.    The 

80  B.  p.  D.  S.,  1829,  p.  246. 

81  B.  and  T..  p.  114. 
»2Same,  p.  120. 


History  of  American  Prisons  307 

impressions  of  childhood,  and  the  early  use  of  liberty,  seemed  to 
them  to  contribute  perhaps  at  a  later  period  to  make  the  young 
delinquents  more  obedient  to  the  laws.  Despite  the  great  novelty 
of  the  Boston  system,  de  Beaumont  and  de  Tocqueville  liked  the 
New  York  system  better,  because  simpler  and  less  remarkable. 
(This  was  a  system  that  followed  the  system  of  Curtis,  which  we 
have  described.)  In  Boston  it  was  not  the  system  that  was  the 
cause  of  success,  but  the  remarkable  man  at  the  head  of  the 
institution.^  There  would  be  great  difficulties  in  putting  such  an 
administration  as  the  Boston  one  into  practice,  if  the  superintendent 
were  inefficient.  The  Boston  system  was  the  more  elevated,  but 
more  difficult.  It  was  possible  to  discover  superintendents  for 
Houses  of  Refuge  like  those  conducted  in  New  York  and  Philadel- 
phia, but  one  could  not  hope  often  to  meet  a  man  like  Wells. 

Francis  Lieber,  himself  a  student  of  prison  discipline,  held  that 
Wells  was  one  of  the  most  peculiar,  most  interesting  and  most 
heart-cheering  men  that  had  ever  come  to  his  knowledge.    He  wrote: 

"We  know  of  no  instructor  who  has  been  deeper  into  the  human  heart,  and 
knows  more  thoroughly  to  what  principles  of  the  human  soul  he  may  apply. ' '  *** 

Doctor  Julius  found  in  the  Boston  House  of  Refuge  rules  that 
looked  excellent  on  paper,  but  which  it  was  impossible,  he  said, 
to  carry  out.^^  By  this  time.  Wells  had,  however,  left  the  House 
of  Reformation,  and  had  established  a  private  school,  of  which  we 
shall  shortly  make  mention.  Julius  declared  Wells  to  be  the  most 
fitted  man  in  America  for  work  with  juvenile  delinquents,  just  as  he 
found  Wood  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  the  best  equipped  warden 
for  adult  prisoners. 

But  Wells  was  very  hard  for  a  committee  of  the  Boston  Common 
Council  to  understand,  who  visited  officially  the  House  of  Reforma- 
tion in  1832.  They  found  the  devotional  exercises  excellent,  but 
the  scholastic  instruction  poor.  The  superintendent,  in  explanation, 
said  that  the  mechanical  part  of  education,  such  as  arithmetic, 
writing  and  spelling,  held  the  lowest  place  among  the  purposes  of 
the  House  of  Reformation.®^  Poor  returns  were  also  being  had 
from  the  labor  of  the  children ;  they  were  earning  little  toward  their 
keep.  The  committee  held  that  the  institution  was  intended  to  be 
one  of  rigorous  moral  and  physical  discipline.  It  had,  said  the 
committee,  for  its  object  ''convertible  practical  utility,  and  not 
recreation  and  show.''  Boys  should  receive  more  care  and  atten- 
tion. They  were  not  properly  employed.  There  was  found  no 
settled  plan  of  systematic  and  productive  labor.  Various  mechanic 
arts  should  be  introduced.  Furthermore,  the  boys  were  sometimes 
detained  too  long  for  their  own  good.^*^  In  short,  the  committee 
obviously  felt  that  the  boys  were  not  earning  enough,  working 
enough,  and  were  not  docile  and  inconspicuous  enough  to  conform 
to  the  standard  of  training  of  those  days. 

»«de   Beaumont   and    de   Tocqueville,    p.    120v 

8*  Same,  p.  120. 

s«  Julius.     Sittleche  Zusbaende,  Vol.  II,  p.  362. 

88  Report  of  Standing  Comm.  Common  Council,  1832. 

"  Same,  pp.  31-33. 


308  History  of  American  Prisons 

A  break  between  Wells  and  the  controlling  powers  was  inevitable. 
The  Common  Council's  committee  wanted  system,  and  Wells  wanted 
self-expression  and  the  development  of  personality.  Wells  resigned 
shortly.  Some  thirty  years  later,  Frank  Sanborn,  the  Secretary  of 
the  Massachusetts  Board  of  State  Charities,  wrote  of  Wells,  that 
the  latter,  when  in  the  flush  of  his  youth, '  *  showed  the  true  magnetic 
power  of  drawing  youth  into  virtuous  paths;  but  he  was  called  to 
other  work.^'^  This  ''work"  was  of  Wells'  own  making,  for  he 
established  a  private  school  in  South  Boston  for  the  moral  discipline 
of  boys.  This  institution  Julius  declared  was  without  equal  at  the 
time  in  America,  and  without  any  precedent.^  The  school  received 
not  only  unruly  boys,  but  those  for  whom  the  special  kind  of  curri- 
culum seemed  fitting.  The  tuition  fee  was  $3.00  a  week,  and  there 
was  capacity  for  40  boys.  The  daily  schedule,  clearly  an  outgrowth 
and  development  of  Wells '  experience  at  the  House  of  Reformation, 
and  an  indication  of  what  he  would  have  aimed  to  institute  at  the 
House  of  Reformation,  had  he  been  permitted  to  work  out  his  pro- 
gram, was  of  such  insurgent  character  in  an  era  of  dogmatic 
principles  of  ' '  schooling, ' '  that  it  deserved  recording :  ^^ 
Summer.  Winter.  Occupation. 

5.00  6.00  Getting    up;     silent    prayers,    making    beds, 

washing,  cleaning  teeth. 
5.15  6.15  Singing,   New   Testament,  prayers  in  unison. 

6.00  7.00  Gymnastics,  games,  running. 

6.45  7.45  Breakfast    (tea    or   coffee,   wheat   bread   and 

butter). 
8.00  8.15  School.      (Reading,    speaking,    writing,    com- 

position, arithmetic,  grammar,  history, 
geography,  natural  history,  natural 
philosophy,  ethics,  botany,  Latin,  Greek, 
French,  phrenology,  music,  drawing, 
bookkeeping,  riding,  fencing.) 
Recess  till  11.30.  Then  running. 
Quiet   occupation    for   each    student,    of   such 

nature  as  he  chooses. 
Gymnastics,  games,  etc.,  as  in  morning. 
Dinner.      (Twice    a    week    fresh    meat,    once 
rice,  once  maize  pudding,  once  beans,  once 
chopped  meat  or  fish.) 
Quiet  occupation,  as  in  morning. 
School. 

Gymnastic   games,   as  in  morning.     Running. 
Supper,  like  breakfast. 
Court.     Judging  conduct  of  each  during  day, 

and  presentation   of  marks   for  the  day. 
Prayer  and  song. 

Bedtime,  separate  prayers,  as  in  morning, 
and  the  overseer  reads  aloud  until  all  boys 
are  asleep. 

The  above  schedule  allotted  414  hours  to  school,  about  41/^  hours 
to  play  and  regulated  gymnastics,  only  one  hour  to  ' '  quiet  occupa- 
tions, ' '  and  about  two  hours  to  religious  observances.  With  Wells 
it  seems  to  have  been  deliberately  a  matter  of  letting  the  individual 

88  Report,  Board  of  State  Charities,  1865,  Lxviii. 
8»  .Julius.  Sittleche  Zusbaende,  Vol.  II,  p.  367. 
*o  Julius.     Sittleche  Zusbaende,  Vol.  II. 


10.00 
11.45 

10.15 
11.45 

12.15 
1.00 

12.15 
1.00 

1.30 
2.00 
4.30 
500 
6.00 

1.30 
2.00 
4.30 
6.00 
6.30 

6.30 
7.15 

7.00 
8.00 

History  of  American  Prisons  309 

child  find  himself,  through  a  maximum  of  playtime  and  hours  of 
self-exploration,  coupled  with  an  abundance  of  schooling  over  a 
wide  range  of  subjects,  and  a  total  absence  of  compulsory  and 
supervised  industrial  training.  It  was  obviously  the  plan  of  this 
clergyman-educator  to  get  as  far  away  as  possible  from  traditional 
educational  and  former  prison  methods  in  dealing  with  children. 
Could  we  know  what  Wells'  scholastic  and  recreational  methods 
were,  we  should  probably  find  an  elementary  approximation  to 
Pestolozzi  and  Montessori.  And  in  penological  philosophy  he  was 
clearly  a  forerunner  of  William  George  and  his  George  Junior 
Republic,  and  of  Thomas  Mott  Osborne,  with  his  Mutual  Welfare 
League. 

Wells  was  obviously  far  in  advance  of  his  time.  The  age  de- 
manded system  —  and  the  subordination  of  individuality  in 
institutional  management.  And  in  both  New  York  and  Boston, 
system  was  secured,  by  the  successors  of  Curtis  and  Wells.  To  the 
New  York  House  of  Refuge  came  N.  C.  Hart  in  July,  1826,  a 
successful  high-school  teacher  ^  of  medium  height,  very  stout  and 
of  becoming  countenance.  He  proved  not  only  a  most  amiable 
superintendent,  but  also  a  good  organizer  and  disciplinarian. 

"The  lightning  with  him  was  made  to  do  its  work  without  the  thunder/' 

He  formulated  a  code  of  rules,'^  from  which  few  changes  were 
made  during  the  succeeding  half  century.  A  system  of  grades  and 
badges  was  inaugurated. 

From  this  time  on,  and  within  a  little  over  a  year  of  the  opening 
of  the  House  of  Refuge,  the  presence  and  influence  of  a  well-defined 
organization  was  manifest  at  the  House  of  Refuge.  By  the  end 
of  1825,  indeed,  a  separate  building  had  already  been  opened  for  the 
girl  inmates.'*^  The  Legislature  in  1826  authorized  the  reception 
of  children  from  any  county  or  city  of  the  State.  The  financial 
support  of  the  Refuge,  at  first  gained  through  private  contributors, 
came  within  a  few  years  from  State  and  city  almost  entirely,  as  we 
shall  shortly  see. 

Much  of  the  excellent  success  of  the  Refuge  came  through  the 
devoted  and  constant  participation  of  certain  of  the  managers, 
particularly  of  three  important  committees,  the  indenturing,  school 
and  executive  committees.  Special  efforts  were  early  made  by  the 
indenturing  committee  to  find  positions  for  the  older  boys  in  the 
mercantile  and  the  marine  service.  Many  boys  were  apprenticed 
to  sea-farers,  on  long  whaling  voyages.*^  Sea-faring  was  regarded 
as  among  the  best  trades  to  enter.  By  1831  the  Refuge  could 
report  that 

*'&  large  number  of  boys  (formerly  inmates)  have  returned  this  season  — 
dressed  without  exception  when  they  came  to  see  us,  some  with  watches  in 
their  pockets.    The  greater  part  returned  to  the  same  industry. ' '  ** 

*i  Half  Century,  p.  117. 
*2  Half  Century,  p.  122. 
"Half  Century,   p.   97. 
**  Annual  Report,  1831,  p.  8. 
«Half  Century,  p.  105. 


310  History  of  American  Prisons 

Great  care  was  taken  by  the  indenturing  committee  to  make 
suitable  placements  of  the  boys  and  girls.  These  gentlemen  served 
without  compensation,  no  member  of  the  Board  of  Managers  being 
allowed  to  receive  any  payment  for  his  services.  The  committee 
met  always  once  a  week,  and  frequently  several  times  a  week,  their 
sessions  occupying  the  greater  part  of  the  day.  All  applications  for 
apprentices  were  investigated  by  the  committee.  Tutelary  super- 
vision was  maintained  over  the  bound-out  children,  and  not 
infrequently,  children  were  transferred  to  other  masters,  if  the 
first  placements  did  not  seem  successful.  The  committee  conceived 
it  a  part  of  its  duty  to  become  personally  well  acquainted  with  the 
boys  in  the  Refuge. 

A  ladies'  committee  gave  similar  attention  to  the  girl  inmates, 
at  least  once  a  week  throughout  the  year.*^  Almost  without  excep- 
tion the  girls  were  indentured  into  ' '  housewifery, "  or  as  we  would 
call  it,  domestic  service. 

By  1834,  1,480  children  had  been  received  and  1,148  bound  out 
as  apprentices.  Correspondence  was  always  kept  up  with  the 
person  to  whom  the  children  were  bound,  and  also  with  the  children 
themselves.'*®  The  managers  claimed  that  these  1,148  had  been 
snatched  from  crime  and  infamy.  By  1836,  the  Society  for  the 
Reformation  of  Juvenile  Delinquents  announced  that  the  number  of 
converts  from  vice  to  morality,  from  idleness  to  industry,  and  from 
despair  to  hope,  had  been  greater  than  could  have  been  secured  by 
any  other  means,  and  more  than  sufficient  to  justify  the  continued 
patronage  of  the  State  and  city  authorities:*^  By  1840,  the  bulk 
of  the  indentured  boys  were  being  placed  out  with  farmers,  and  the 
tendency  to  send  boys  to  sea  had  disappeared. 

Fifteen  years'  test  had  now  been  given  to  the  results  of  the 
Refuge.  Since  the  system  had  been  established,  the  number  of 
juvenile  convicts  coming  before  the  courts  had  diminished  by  nearly 
one-half,  and  in  some  years  by  more.  Of  those  discharged  from  the 
Refuge,  very  few  were  ever  recommitted.^^  One  year  of  residence 
at  the  Refuge  generally  was  sufficient  discipline  and  training  before 
indenturing.  As  the  years  went  by,  scarcely  a  week  went  by  with- 
out some  former  inmate  visiting  the  Refuge  as  a  friendly  and 
successful  young  citizen.  By  1844,  practically  twenty  years  had 
elapsed  since  the  opening.  A  cross-section  presented  by  the  abund- 
ant statistics  in  the  annual  report  gives  a  picture  of  the  institution, 
its  population  and  activities.  During  the  year,  262  inmates  were 
received,  as  follows: 

From  New  York  Police  Office 114 

From  the  Court  of  Sessions 55 

From  Commissioners  of  the  Almshouse 18 

From  other  counties 29 

216 
Returned  after  having  been  indentured  or  released  to  friends 46 


262 


*«  Annual  Report,  1831,  p.  21. 
"  Annual  Report,  1836,  p.  7. 
*«  Same,  1840,  p.  21. 
*»  Same.  1834,  p.  9. 


History  of  American  Prisons 


311 


The  number  of  inmates  brought  back  to  the  institution  (46)  from 
apprenticeship  or  the  supervision  of  friends  was  reasonably  small, 
judged  by  comparison  with  the  parole-violation  statistics  of  the 
present  day,  being  in  1844  18  per  cent. 

The  distribution  of  population  by  color  was  as  follows: 


In  Institution 
January  1,  1844 

Received  during 
Year 

Disposed  of 
during  Year 

Remaining 
end  of  Year 

Boys,  white 

214 
62 

36 
9 

160 
54 

41 

7 

165 
67 

38 
6 

209 

Girls,  white 

49 

Boys,  colored 

Girls,  colored 

39 
10 

321 

262 

276 

307 

Racially,  the  population,  which  in  the  first  years  had  been  pre- 
dominantly the  children  of  American  parents,  had  changed,  and 
Irish  children  were  in  the  majority : 


Irish 88 

American 47 

English 22 


German 14 

Scotch 6 

French 1 


The  children  were  being  received  at  very  varied  ages. 
216  received  for  the  first  time  in  1844,  there  were : 


Of  the 


7  at  the  age  of  8 
2  at  the  age  of  9 
7  at  the  age  of  10 

11  at  the  age  of  11 

12  at  the  age  of  12 


19  at  the  age  of  13 
41  at  the  age  of  14 
35  at  the  age  of  15 
40  at  the  age  of  16 
22  at  the  age  of  17 


Average  age  of  all  the  children,  13  years,  11  months. 

During  the  year,  indenturing  had  been  mainly  to  farmers  (116 
boys),  housewifery  (68  girls),  boot  and  shoe  makers  (14  boys),  and 
smaller  numbers  to  many  different  trades. 

The  New  York  House  of  Refuge  was  an  institution  that  was 
firmly  determined  to  train  children  in  habits  of  industry.  Curtis, 
the  first  superintendent,  fell  out,  as  we  have  seen,  with  his  board 
of  managers  because  of  alleged  unsystematic  conduct  of  the  Refuge. 
His  successor,  N.  C.  Hart,  developed  a  program  that  to-day  would 
seem  stiff  indeed  i^*^ 


Sunrise 


Until  7.00. 
7.00 

7.30-12.00 
12.00-1.00 
1.00-5.00   . 
5.00-5.30    . 
5.30-8.00   . 
8.00    


Getting       up,       assembly, 

parade  in  open  air. 
Breakfast. 
School. 
Labor. 
Dinner. 
Labor. 
Supper. 
School. 
Bed,  after  prayers. 


prayers, 


In  short,  the  children  were  compelled  to  work  8  hours  a  day,  and 
in  addition  to  that  they  were  given  four  hours  of  schooling  each 
week  day.    Into  this  day,  already  filled  to  the  extent  of  12  hours. 


»>  Annual  Report,  House  of  Refuge,  1831. 


312  History  of  American  Prisons 

came  a  bit  of  play,  necessarily  very  brief,  for  those  who  had  finished 
their  morning  work  early.  The  labor  of  the  children  was,  as  far 
as  possible,  let  out  to  contractors,  but  the  labor  was  done  at  the 
institution.  In  1828,  the  fee  given  per  diem  per  capita  by  the 
contractors  was  121/2  cents  for  8  hours  work: 

"This  method  has  been  adopted  as  on  the  whole  the  most  advantageous. 
Free  from  losses  and  risks  attendant  upon  carrying  on  of  trades  for  the 
account  of  the  Society  it  enables  the  officers  of  the  institution  to  bestow  more 
time  and  greater  attention  on  the  moral  government  of  the  children. ' ' " 

In  1831,  the  Society  received  for  the  labor  of  the  children 
$2,953.36.  The  chief  occupations  through  this  decade  were  the 
making  of  brass  nails,  the  manufacturing  of  cane  seats  for  chairs, 
whip  stocks,  as  well  as  weaving,  willow  working  (covers  for  bottles 
and  demi-johns)  and  shoemaking.^^ 

In  1837,  there  was  but  four  months'  labor  in  the  shops,  because 
of  the  business  depression  throughout  the  country.  Contractors 
would  not  take  the  boys,  even  without  compensation.  In  1839,  the 
boys  were  reported  as  being  occupied  for  from  6  hours  to  7  hours 
at  some  light  mechanical  employment,  and  as  having  produced  in 
the  last  year  a  total  of  $1,787  for  the  institution.  In  1841,  120  of 
the  boys  were  being  employed  at  from  9  cents  to  12%  cents  a  day. 

The  causes  of  juvenile  crime  were  increasingly  studied  in  the 
annual  reports.  The  environmental  theory  of  the  causes  of  delin- 
quency had  been  discussed,  stressed,  even  before  the  Refuge  was 
established.  Neglected  and  abandoned  children  fell  naturally  into 
evil  ways.  Of  the  first  513  children  received  by  the  House  of 
Refuge : 

135  had  lost  their  fathers. 

40  had  lost  their  mothers. 

67  were  orphans. 

51  were  little  criminals  because  of  parental  neglect  or  misconduct. 

47  were  children  whose  mothers  had  married  again.  ^ 

The  name  ' '  House  of  Refuge ' '  had  been  chosen  because  it  might 
suggest  misfortune  only,  and  not  punishment.  The  Society  was 
conscious  of  a  great  distinction  between  the  little  inmates  and  the 
adult  inmates  of  a  prison. 

"With  a  criminal,  whose  corruption  is  inveterate  and  deeply  rooted,  the  feel- 
ing of  honesty  is  not  awakened,  because  the  sentiment  is  extinct. " 

But  it  was  believed  that  the  feeling  still  existed  in  the  youthful 
breast.    Griscom  said  in  1826: 

**A  child  might  be  made  quiet  and  industrious  by  beating,  but  it  seldom 
happened  that  kind-heartedness,  morality  and  intelligence  were  induced  by 
whipping. "  ^ 

Therefore,  on  admission  the  lad  was  informed  that  he  was  not  in  a 
prison.  The  crimes  he  might  have  committed  before  entrance  would 
be  forgotten,  and  his  career  in  the  Refuge  would  depend  upon 

51  Annual  Report,  House  of  Refuge,  p.  10. 

E2  Annual  Report,  1835,  p.  47. 

^  de   Beaumont  and   de   Tocqueville,   p.    11. 

"  Same,  p.  123. 

»  Half  Century,  p.  120. 


History  of  American  Prisons  313 

his  present  and  future  conduct.  And,  while  the  lad  was  getting 
his  training  for  life,  the  Society  was  studying  the  causes  of  his 
delinquency. 

Intemperance  was  proclaimed  in  1836  one  of  the  chief  causes,  and 
described  as  a  hydra-headed  monster.  The  Society  found  little 
incentive  to  crime  occasioned  by  want,  but  it  asked : 

**If  we  could  but  abolish  drunkenness,  where  would  we  find  candidates  for 
admission  into  our  prisons  f""" 

The  temptations  offered  by  petty  pawnbrokers'  shops  were 
another  important  cause  of  crime.  These  shops  were  '^fences,'* 
for  the  receipt  of  stolen  goods.  The  report  advocated  the  opening 
of  several  offices  under  the  direction  of  a  board  of  managers  like 
those  of  a  savings  bank  or  of  the  House  of  Refuge,  with  rates  of 
interest  simply  sufficient  to  meet  the  operating  expenses.  Institu- 
tions, said  the  report,  had  already  existed  in  Europe  like  these. 
Nearly  a  century  later,  the  Provident  Loan  Society,  a  philanthropic 
pawnbroking  society,  was  established  along  similar  lines  in  New 
York  City. 

In  the  following  years,  theatrical  performances  came  in  for  severe 
criticism  as  a  demoralizing  influence  upon  the  children  of  the 
city.  Several  new  minor  theatres  had  opened,  and  the  boys  stood 
in  throngs  outside  the  entrances,  begging  for  the  ** return  checks" 
that  would  admit  them.  Failing  these,  or  stimulated  by  the  gay 
life  within  the  theatre,  children  would  steal  from  parents  or  em- 
ployers, or  get  money  from  the  pawnbroking  ''fences."  The  pits 
in  the  theatre  brought  the  lads  into  contact  with  strangers,  pick- 
pockets and  the  like.  Out  of  130  instances  of  delinquency,  59  were 
attributed  to  this  cause.^^ 

There  were  2,850  dram  shops  licensed  in  the  city,  a  large  pro- 
portion of  which  were  kept  open  on  Sunday.  The  day  was 
profaned.  The  penalty  for  vending  strong  drink  on  the  Sabbath 
was  practically  a  dead  letter.  A  natural  consequence  of  intem- 
perance was  the  striking  degree  of  licentiousness  in  both  sexes. 

In  1838,  the  Society  recommended  a  strengthening  of  the 
*' patrol,"  or  police  force.  Three-fourths  of  the  petty  thefts  were 
being  committed  by  minors.  Juvenile  peddlers  should  be  licensed. 
There  was  a  most  serious  lack  of  attendance  at  schools ;  4,000  chil- 
dren under  the  age  of  14  were  not  going  to  school.  In  1839,  the 
Society  discovered  another  factor  in  making  young  criminals,  the 
New  York  fire  department.  Children,  known  as  volunteers,  were 
first  at  the  fire  houses,  on  an  alarm  of  fire,  and  furnished  part  of 
the  motive  power.  There  was  the  well-known  strife  to  get  to  the 
fire  first.  There  was  additional  fatigue  induced  thereby,  and  the 
thirst  for  stimulants.  Free  access  to  merchandise  in  the  burning 
or  destroyed  buildings,  and  the  total  absence  of  older  persons  of 
authority  gave  to  the  children  almost  irresistible  temptations.  The 
Society  appealed  for  a  paid  fire  department. 

58  Annual  Report,  1836,  p.  15. 
67  Annual  Report,  1837,  p.  17. 


314  History  of  American  Prisons 

The  hawking  of  papers,  and  the  erratic  life  of  the  canal  boats, 
were  cited  also  as  leading  to  crime.  There  was  noted,  too,  the 
orphanage  of  immigrant  children,  whose  parents  had  died  on  the 
voyage  across  from  Europe.  Fathers,  moreover,  were  cited  who 
had  left  their  families,  and  husbands  who  had  gone  west  to  seek 
work.  The  children  of  the  Refuge  were,  more  than  half  of  them, 
foreign-born  or  the  children  of  foreigners.^^  Many  families  were 
being  supported  largely  by  the  begging  methods  of  their  children.^^ 

**Who,  among  all  the  sons  and  daughters  of  Adam,  if  subjected  to  the  same 
ordeal  that  tries  the  morals  of  these  children,  would  come  forth  unscathed?  It 
is  not  always  the  act  alone  that  decides  the  turpitude  of  the  offense;  there  are 
10,000  circumstances  that  come  in  to  heighten  or  palliate  the  criminality  of  the 
transaction. ' '  ™ 

The  mortality  record  of  the  institution  was  almost  always  excel- 
lent. During  the  first  four  years  there  was  but  one  death,  and 
that  not  from  natural  causes.  The  record  of  illnesses  showed  what 
in  those  days  were  considered  the  '  *  usual  summer  maladies, ' '  such 
as  intermittent  fevers,  dysentery,  and  in  a  number  of  years  dis- 
tressing * '  opthalmia, "  which  was  contagious,  and  was  probably 
trachoma. 

In  the  first  ten  years  of  the  institution's  career,  there  were  but 
15  deaths,  among  1,478  children,  of  which  ten  deaths  occurred  in 
the  '  *  cholera  year. ' '  ^^  The  resident  physician  furnished  no  evi- 
dence, in  his  annual  reports,  of  any  serious  study  or  concern  as  to 
the  causes  of  disease  in  the  institutional  inmates.  In  1834,  the 
city  was  creeping  up  toward  the  institution,  and  the  opening  of 
streets  and  the  erection  of  an  embankment  for  the  railroad  led  the 
physician  to  state  that  the  effluvia  from  the  stagnant  water  and  the 
new  soil  told  on  the  children's  health.  Bad  water  from  new  wells 
was  given  as  a  cause  of  dysentery. 

Only  29  deaths  occurred  in  the  first  16  years.^ 

**Many  children  are  sent  to  the  Eefuge  who  are  worn  down  by  disease  (the 
offspring  of  their  own  folly),  who  by  careful  medical  treatment,  aided  by 
wholesome  restraint,  are  soon  returned  to  health  and  a  sound  constitution. ' ' 

As  already  stated,  the  inception  of  the  House  of  Refuge  was  due 
to  private  philanthropy,  and  the  financial  support  of  the  under- 
taking came  at  first  from  contributed  funds.  At  the  meeting  of 
the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Pauperism  on  December  19th, 
1823,  $800  was  subscribed,  and  shortly  afterwards  $18,000  was 
readily  secured,®^  the  city  being  divided  into  canvassing  districts. 
For  $6,000,  the  Federal  Government  ceded,  at  the  junction  of 
Bloomingdale  Road  and  the  Old  Post  Road  (the  present  Madison 
Square)  a  site  of  some  four  acres,  with  large  barracks,  and  a  house 
suitable  for  the  superintendent  and  his  family.®*  Of  this  sum, 
$4,000  was  subsequently  remitted  by  Congress. 

««  Annual  Report,  1839,  p.  9. 
•^s  Annual  Report,  1840,  p.  22. 
<»  Annual  Report,  1841,  p.  13. 
«i  Annual  Report,  1834,  p.  13. 
82  Annual  Report.  1840,  p.  29. 
«8  Half  Century,  p.  57. 
**Same,  p.  74. 


History  of  American  Prisons  315 

The  State  Legislature  in  1825  provided  for  an  appropriation  of 
$2,000  annually  for  the  term  of  five  years,  beginning  in  1826.  In 
1829,  greater  support  by  the  State  was  obtained,  for  an  annual 
appropriation  of  $8,000  was  authorized,  to  be  paid  out  of  the  sur- 
plus accruing  from  the  moneys  received  from  the  head-tax  on  immi- 
grants, and  used  primarily  for  the  maintenance  of  the  Marine 
Hospital  on  Staten  Island.^  Furthermore,  the  excise  commis- 
sioners in  the  city  of  New  York  were  directed  by  law  hereafter  to 
pay  to  the  Society  for  the  Reformation  of  Juvenile  Delinquents 
$1.50  from  every  tax  received  for  licensing  any  tavern,  grocer  or 
** ordinary,"  or  public  garden. 

Theatres  and  circuses  were  taxed  $500  and  $250  respectively, 
for  the  benefit  of  the  House  of  Refuge.  In  1831,  the  excise  act  was 
amended,  to  provide  for  an  appropriation  of  a  definite  sum  of 
$4,000  annually.  In  1839,  a  penalty  of  $500  was  placed  upon  the 
neglect  of  a  theatre  or  circus  to  secure  a  license,  the  said  sum  to  be 
collected  by  the  Society.  Theatre  and  circus  licenses  were  also  still 
to  be  paid  to  the  Society. 

A  typical  financial  statement  was  that  of  the  fiscal  year  1831: 
Income.  Expenditures. 

Prom  labor  of  children $2,953  36      Balance  due  treasurer $2,242  67 

Marine  Hospital  Fund 8.000  00       Clothing    1,492  50 

Tavern  licenses  1,250  00      Food 4,807  56 

Tax  on  4  theatres 2,000  00       Coal,     wood,     oil,     stoves, 

Excise  fund  4,000  00  etc 1,100  76 

Sales  of  chair  bottoms,  etc.      2,524  82       Furniture,    beds,    bedding. 

Cash,   donations,   subscrip-  etc 961  29 

tions,  etc  281  83       School    and    hospital 189  12 

Balance  due  1,046  10      Salaries  3,346  45 

Chair  shop 2,489  83 

Building,   repairs,    etc 2,582  54 

Paid  finance  committee 6,737  73 

Premium,  interest  Ill  60 

Printing     annual     report, 

stationery,  etc 110  72 

Horse,  cows,  etc 447  84 


$26,620  61 


$22,056  11  To  balance  $1,046  10 

The  Society  received  in  1834  a  donation  of  $5,000  from  the 
Manumission  Society  toward  the  erection  of  a  building  for  colored 
children.  The  lot  of  such  delinquent  children  in  the  city  was  very 
hard.  They  had  the  same  temptations  to  commit  crime  as  did  the 
white  children,  whereas  on  the  other  hand  the  opportunities  for 
apprenticeship  were  not  open  to  them.  Both  the  colored  parents 
and  their  children  were  densely  ignorant. 

By  1835,  the  Society  had  expended  about  $80,000  for  buildings,^ 
workshops,  walls  and  the  like.  The  new  building  for  the  colored 
children  was  burned  in  1836  by  one  of  the  girl  inmates,  who  was 
promptly  sent  to  State  prison.  In  1838,  a  new  location  was  chosen 
for  the  Refuge,  at  Bellevue,  on  the  borders  of  the  East  River,  at  the 
foot  of  East  Twenty-third  Street.     Near  this  location  was  the 

««  Laws  of  1829,  Chapter  302. 
«>  Annual  Report,  1835,  p.  16. 


316  History  of  American  Prisons 

Almshouse.  A  new  building,  150  feet  long  and  42  feet  wide,  three 
stories  in  height,  was  erected  for  the  girls,  and  the  fever  hospital 
was  converted  into  a  dormitory  for  boys.^'  In  1839,  the  board  of 
managers  reported  that  the  Refuge  supported,  schooled,  and  fur- 
nished books  and  clothing  at  $1.27  per  capita  per  week.  This 
included  all  expenses,  save  insurance  and  repairs  to  buildings. 
Further  weekly  per  capitas  were  announced  as  follows :  ^* 

Average.  Per  Capita. 

1836-37  243  Children  $1.24 

1837-38 209        "  1.50 

1838-39  229        ♦«  1.15 

1839-40 209        *  *  1.26 

The  cost  of  the  new  female  building,  and  of  the  alterations  on 
the  fever  hospital,  shops,  stables,  wall,  etc.,  was  $52,968.64,  of  which 
the  city  of  New  York  paid  $40,000. 

The  treasurer's  report  for  1844  varied  little  in  nature  from 
that  of  1831,  above  cited.  Disbursements  were  very  similar,  the 
income  being  from  the  following  sources: 

From  labor  of  children: 

Due  1843,  received  in  1844 $1,447  29 

Due  in  1844 5,583  55 

$7,030  84 

From    State    Treasury     (instead    of    Marine    Hospital 

Fund)  8,000  00 

Licensing  of  theatres  and  circuses 3,194  00 

Excise  fund  4,000  00 

Finance  Committee 573  15 

Keturning  now  to  a  consideration  of  the  history  of  the  Boston 
House  of  Reformation  during  the  first  twenty  years  of  its  career, 
we  find  that  the  Boston  House  of  Reformation  had  its  origin  in  an 
act  of  the  Massachusetts  Legislature,  which  in  the  winter  session 
of  1826  gave  to  the  city  council  of  Boston  authority  to  send 
juvenile  delinquents,  who  under  the  old  law  would  have  been  sent 
to  State  prison,  to  such  place  as  the  city  should  provide  at  South 
Boston.^  The  House  of  Reformation  was  in  consequence  estab- 
lished some  two  and  one-half  miles  from  the  city,  near  the  House 
of  Industry.  A  commodious  building  was  located  within  a  yard 
of  from  30  to  40  acres.  The  boys  worked  in  the  secured  enclosed 
field  at  times,  under  supervision  of  the  superintendent. 

The  House  of  Reformation  and  the  House  of  Industry  were  under 
the  same  unpaid  board  of  managers,  seven  gentlemen  from  Boston. 
The  early  staff  consisted  of  a  superintendent,  school  teacher,  and 
the  overseer  of  the  shoeshop.  The  institution  was  supported 
entirely  by  the  city  of  Boston,  at  a  cost  in  1827  of  about  $3,000."^" 

The  garb  of  the  boys  was  a  plain  uniform,  a  ''jockey "-blue  jacket 
and  white  trousers,  the  cost  of  the  suit  being  about  one  dollar. 

We  have  already  seen,  in  describing  the  system  under  Mr.  Wells, 
that  the  general  purpose  and  administration  of  the  Boston  institu- 

"  Annual  Report,  1838,  p.  6. 
«8  Same,  1839,  p.  42. 
"»  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1826,  p.  47. 
TOB.  P.  D.  S.,  1827,  p.  133. 


History  of  American  Prisons 


317 


tion  was  similar  to  that  of  the  New  York  House  of  Refuge.  Boys 
and  girls  were  received  from  the  courts,  trained,  and  then 
''identified."  The  whole  number  received  from  September  20, 
1826,  to  April  30,  1828,  was  143,  of  whom  26  were  girls.  By  1829, 
the  average  number  of  inmates  was  100,  with  about  ten  per  cent, 
of  them  girls.  Their  commitments  were  for  the  following 
delinquencies :  ^^ 

Stealing   47 

Vagabondage    29 

Stubborn  and  disobedient 49 

Leading  idle  life,  and  being  neglected  by  parents  on  account  of  drunk- 
enness and  other  causes 11 

Wanton  and  lascivious  conduct 4 

The  average  age  of  the  children  was  11  years  and  10  months. 
Their  employments  in  the  week  of  January  4th,  1829,  were  the 
following : 


Occupations 

Boys 

Girls 

Hat  makinE    

16 

15 

27 

15 

3 

10 

1 

1 

.... 

"3 

Hair  work         •... 

Monitors 

Office 

1 

HouBe  work 

1 

8 

In  solitude 

1 

91 

11 

By  1831,  the  annual  cost  of  maintenance  had  increased  to  about 
$6,000.  Children  to  the  number  of  303  had  been  received,  and 
204  discharged,  of  whom  155  were  reported  to  be  doing  well.  Only 
two  deaths  had  occurred  in  4  years  and  9  months,  and  in  15  months 
only  one  case  of  sickness.  In  1832  —  the  last  year  of  Mr.  Wells* 
superintendency  —  the  need  of  a  new  building  was  felt.  Details 
of  the  House  of  Reformation  are  deplorably  few,  because  no  annual 
reports  were  published. 

Practically  coinciden tally  with  Mr.  Wells'  retirement  from  the 
Boston  House  of  Reformation,  an  *' association  of  gentlemen  of 
great  respectability''  purchased  in  1833  Thompson's  Island  in 
Boston  Harbor,  containing  about  120  acres  of  good  land,  and  pro- 
ceeded to  erect  on  the  island  suitable  buildings  for  a  farm  school 
for  the  education  and  reformation  of  boys  exposed  to  extraordinary 
temptations,  and  who  were  in  danger  of  becoming  vicious  and 
dangerous.^^  Another  charitable  association,  the  ''Boston  Asy- 
lum," had  been  incorporated  as  early  as  the  year  1814  to  ''receive, 
instruct,  and  employ  indigent  boys  of  Boston,"  and  orphans  in 
particular.  The  Asylum  had  power  to  receive  those  children  whose 
parents  neglected  them.     Places  as  apprentices  were  obtained  by 

"  B.  p.  D.  S.,  1829,  p.  192. 

"  B.  p.  D.  S.,  1834,  p.  836,  and   Dorothea  Dix,  p.  92. 


318  History  of  American  Prisons 

the  Asylum  for  the  children.  Legal  power  was  given  to  duly- 
authorized  persons  to  take  these  children  from  their  neglectful 
parents.'^^  This  institution  was  the  oldest  of  its  class  in  Massa- 
chusetts, and  one  of  the  oldest  in  the  world/* 

The  Boston  Asylum  and  the  new  Farm  School  on  Thompson's 
Island  merged  in  1835,  under  the  title  of  ' '  The  Boston  Asylum  and 
Farm  School  for  Indigent  Boys."  The  society  was  strictly  a 
private  corporation,  and  received  boys  who  had  not  yet  committed 
crime.  It  was  believed  that  no  stigma  would  be  attached  to  Farm 
School  boys.  The  Farm  School  was  to  give  to  children  an  open-air 
and  agricultural  training,  as  well  as  schooling  —  a  program  sug- 
gested in  1831  by  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  when  he  was  a  member  of 
the  Boston  School  Committee,  but  his  recommendation  was  not 
acted  on."^^  On  Thompson's  Island  there  was  farming,  much  exer- 
cise in  the  open  air,  and  sea  bathing,  as  well  as  ** innocent  sports." 
Each  boy  had  a  flower  garden  to  cultivate.  The  boys  learned 
domestic  service  also.  In  the  summer,  they  worked  one  week  upon 
the  farm,  and  passed  the  next  week  in  school.  Men  from  the 
city  came  over  on  Sunday  to  address  the  children.  Between  1835 
and  1836,  about  400  boys  were  received,  and  37  had  been 
apprenticed.^* 

During  the  winter,  6  hours  of  schooling  were  had  each  week  day, 
and  also  from  dark  until  prayers.  The  boys  slept  in  a  dormitory, 
60  by  36  feet,  the  berths  being  ''double-deckers,"  one  above  the 
other.     The  supervisor  slept  in  the  dormitory.^ 

The  year 's  expense  sheets  cited  by  the  Prison  Discipline  Society 's 
report  of  1837  are  of  interest: 

Food,  110  boys  per  week $64  43 

Salaries,  per  week: 

Superintendent  and  family $19  17 

Schoolmaster  and  family 8  65 

Three  females  at  $1.75 5  25 

2  men  at  $15  a  month 7  00 

One  tailor 2  00 

One  assistant 1  50 

$43  57 

Fuel,  soap,  wear  and  tear,  bedding,  etc.: 

Fuel    per   year $300  00 

Soap 75  00 

Wear    and    tear 1  50 

Clothing  each  boy  per  year 11  00 

This  new  movement  —  with  its  broader  institutional  conception, 
and  its  support  by  private  philanthropy  —  caused  diminished 
public  interest  in,  and  a  reduction  in  the  number  of  inmates  of, 
the  Boston  House  of  Reformation.  From  now  on,  until  the  end 
of  the  period  we  are  considering,  the  House  of  Reformation  offers 
no   specially   interesting   features.      The   children   were   removed 

'3  Memorial  of  Society  for  Prev.  of  J.  Del.,  to  N.  Y.  Legislature,  in  Docs,  of 
House  of  Refuge,  1832,  p.  34. 

''*  Report,   Massachusetts  Board   of  State  Charities,   1865,  p.  97. 

75  Annual  Report,  Board  of  State  Charities,  1865,  p.  102. 

78  Dorothea  Dix,  p.  92. 

"  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1837,  p.  154. 


History  of  American  Prisons  319 

temporarily  in  1833  or  1834  to  Fort  Warren  in  Boston  Harbor, 
while  the  House  of  Reformation  was  being  renovated  for  use  as  a 
House  of  Correction/*  and  they  were  then  moved  back  to  one  wing 
of  the  renovated  structure,  an  entirely  unsuitable  and  cramped 
arrangement. 

By  1836,  a  **new  and  noble  edifice"  was  occupied  by  the  House 
of  Reformation.  The  boys  were  making  850,000  brass  nails  a  day. 
The  girls  were  sewing  and  learning  housewifery.''^  Six  hours  of 
contract  labor  and  four  hours  of  school  were  the  daily  program. 
The  contractor  paid  10  cents  a  day  for  each  boy 's  labor.  The  boys 
not  thus  occupied  picked  oakum,  netting  the  institution  10  to  15 
cents  a  day. 

In  1836,  colored  children  were  first  admitted.  The  ages  of  the 
inmates  ranged  from  8  to  21 ;  the  causes  of  commitment  of  the  boys 
were  as  follows :  *^ 

Larceny 33 

Stubbornness  and  disobedience 21 

Vagrancy  - 15 

Drunkenness 1 

The  girls  were  committed  for  the  following  causes: 

Larceny    4 

Stubbornness   and   disobedience 8 

Wantonness    and   lasciviousness 3 

Vagrancy  2 

Obtaining  money  under  false  pretenses 1 

About  1841,  the  House  of  Reformation  became  a  branch  of  the 
House  of  Industry,  and  under  the  same  management  as  the  latter 
institution.  The  children  were  kept  under  constant  but  mild 
discipline.^     Their  hours  were: 

Labor 6  hours 

School   4  hours 

Recreation   2  and  %  hours 

Mending,  sweeping,  cleaning,  making  beds,  etc Sy^  hours 

Sleep  8  hours 

The  east  wing  of  the  building  was  by  1847  occupied  by  the 
**Boylston  School,"  numbering  about  100  boys,  between  the  ages 
of  6  and  13,  who  were  of  humble  origin,  but  of  promising  capacity. 
They  pursued  the  usual  common  school  branches,  and  were  placed 
out  at  the  proper  time  as  apprentices. 

The  example  of  New  York  and  Boston,  in  establishing  separate 
institutions  for  juvenile  delinquents  was  soon  followed  by  Philadel- 
phia. By  1827,  $15,000  had  been  raised  by  private  subscriptions, 
and  the  Pennsylvania  Legislature  had  voted  $40,000  for  the 
completion  of  a  House  of  Refuge.®^  The  Refuge  was  opened  on 
November  29th,  1828,  and  received  the  first  inmates  in  December.^^ 
More  than  $86,000  was  ultimately  expended  in  construction  and 

'«B.  p.  D.  S.,  1834,  p.  836. 
'•  Same,  1836,  p.  53. 

80  Same.  1837,  p.  153. 

81  Dorothea  Dix,  1847,  p.  90. 

82  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1827,  p.  136. 

83  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1829,  p.  324. 


320  History  of  American  Prisons 

outfitting.**  The  institution  was  situated  on  a  hill  near  Philadel- 
phia, and  was  a  large  building  with  surrounding  gardens.  The 
building  cost  $38,035,  the  main  building  being  92  feet  long,  the 
center  of  the  building  containing  a  room  for  library,  and  for  the 
use  of  the  managers  and  the  families  of  the  institution  officers. 
The  wings  of  the  structure  comprised  the  dormitories  for  boys 
and  girls,  and  several  large  school  rooms.  Separate  cells  (called 
dormitories),  were  provided  for  entire  separation  at  night,  the 
dimensions  being  7  feet  long,  by  4  feet  wide  (slightly  larger  than 
the  cells  at  Auburn  Prison,  and  much  smaller  than  those  at  the 
Eastern  Penitentiary).  Each  cell  was  furnished  with  a  small 
bedstead  and  shelf,  w^as  well  lighted,  and  well  ventilated,  and 
exposed  at  all  times  to  supervision. 

The  workshops  were  located  in  an  extensive  area,  surrounded  by 
a  high  wall.  A  hospital  and  a  chapel  were  provided.  The  first 
annual  report  showed  57  boys  and  23  girls  as  inmates.  The  trades 
were : 

Boys.  Girls. 

Bookbinding.  Sewing. 

Basket  weaving.  Washing. 

Wicker  working.  Ironing. 

Tailoring.  Mending. 

Carpentry.  Cooking. 

Shoemaking.  General  housework. 

The  daily  program  was : 

4.45  Kising  bell. 

5.00  Dormitories  opened. 
5.00-7.00     Morning  worship  and  school. 

7.00  Breakfast. 

7.30  Work. 

12.00  Dinner,  then  a  lecture  or  talk. 

1.00  Work  (y2  hour  of  play,  after  completion  of  work  in  afternoon.) 

5.00  Supper. 

5.30  School. 

7.45  Evening  prayers,  then  bed. 

The  contractors  paid  I214  cents  a  day  for  8  hours  labor  of  the 
able-bodied  children,  which  was  a  sum  entirely  inadequate  for 
maintenance.  The  baleful  effects  of  a  childhood  passed  without 
schooling  were  emphasized  by  the  Pennsylvania  Society  for  Pro- 
motion of  Public  Schools  in  1830,  when  it  asserted  that  there  were 
at  least  400,000  persons  in  Pennsylvania,  between  the  ages  of  5  and 
14,  and  that  of  these  not  150,000  were  in  all  the  schools  of  the 
State.«5 

Juvenile  cases  fell  off  materially  in  the  Philadelphia  courts  after 
the  establishment  of  the  House  of  Eefuge.  This  applied  to  the 
white  children  only.  Colored  children,  who  were  not  admitted  to 
the  House  of  Refuge,  continued  to  come  before  the  courts  in  large 
numbers.  The  managers  early  found  that  the  younger  children 
were  far  more  receptive  to  reformatory  treatment,  and  urged  in 
their  first  annual  report  that  only  children  under  16  should  be 
admitted. 

8*,Tulius.     Sittleche  Zusbaende.  Vol.   II,  p.   359. 

s«  Mary  Carpenter,  "  Juvenile  Delinquents,"  1853,  p.  210. 


History  of  American  Prisons 


321 


In  the  same  year  we  find  the  first  record  of  a  benefaction  to  a 
private  institution  for  delinquents,  Frederick  Kohne  leaving  to  the 
House  of  Refuge  $100,000  in  his  will. 

In  1831,  the  receipts  were: 

Life   and   annual   subscriptions,   donations,   and   from   labor   of 

inmates  $4,434  98 

County  treasury  10,000  00 

$14,434  98 
Expenses : 
Provisions,  clothing,  fuel,  salaries,  repairs,  interest $15,605  86 

The  deficit  was  therefore,  in  this  year,  $1,170.84.  The  city  of 
Philadelphia  gave  from  $10,000  to  $14,000  a  year  in  support  of 
the  institution.^^ 

The  statistics  of  population  for  the  year  1831  were :  *^ 


Received 

Boys 

Girls 

Total 

From  courts  and  magistrates           . .    . 

87 

24 

111 

Returned  after  escape 

1 

Returned  after  indenturing 

11 

99 

24 

123 

By  indenture 

39 
6 
7 

14 
3 
2 
2 

10 
8 
4 
3 

49 

By  age 

14 

Not  proper  subjects 

11 

Returned  to  friends ; 

17 

Sent  to  almshouse 

3 

Sent  to  sea 

2 

Died 

2 

73 

25 

98 

113 

44 

157 

The  lads  were  indentured  more  to  farmers  than  to  any  other 
occupation.  The  girls  all  learned  * '  housewifery. ' '  The  average  age 
of  the  boys  was  14i/^,  of  the  girls  15,  on  reception.  The  time  of 
discharge  was  at  majority.®^  The  managers  of  the  Philadelphia 
institution  stated  in  1833  their  attitude  regarding  juvenile  delin- 
quency. Juvenile  delinquents,  and  particularly  those  of  tender  age, 
had  not  acquired  habits  of  crime,  but  were  on  the  way  to  acquiring 
them.  Their  first  offenses  were  to  be  considered  symptomatic, 
showing  temptations,  evil  counsel,  bad  examples,  or  parental 
neglect.  The  purpose  of  the  establishment  was  essentially  parental, 
and  children  were  bound  out  from  the  Refuge  without  stigma  and 
without  difficulty.  Masters  took  them  into  their  homes  and  placed 
them  on  a  footing  with  the  other  apprentices.  Masters,  however, 
would  not  take  the  oldest  boys,  because  there  would  not  be  sufficient 
time  left  before  the  boys'  majority  to  afford  compensation  for  the 
unrequited  expenses  of  the  earlier  period  of  apprenticeship.     An 

«8  Julius.      Sittleche  Zusbaende,  Vol.   II,  p.    360. 

8^  B.  P.  D.  S.,  1832,  p.  578. 

88  Julius.     Sittleche  Zusbaende,  Vol.  II,  p.  362. 

'  11 


322  History  of  American  Prisons 

*  *  incorrigibly  vicious ' '  boy  was  not  bound  out.  The  Kef  uge  was  not 
a  prison,  nor  really  a  place  of  punishment.  The  administration 
was  not  in  any  sense  vindictive. 

The  managers  in  this  year  announced  a  new  cause  of  juvenile 
corruption  —  the  children's  theatres,  in  which  the  players  were 
minors  of  both  sexes.  These  show-houses  were  established  in  obscure 
places,  and  were  conducted  with  unlimited  license.  They  were 
visited  by  children  in  stealth,  and  often  the  entrance  fees  were 
dishonestly  acquired. 

It  was  regarded  as  a  notable  fact  that  in  the  ** cholera  year"  of 
1832  in  Philadelphia,  not  a  single  case  of  cholera  developed  in 
the  House  of  Refuge. 


CHAPTER  XXV 


THE  STATE  OF  PRISONS  IN   1845 

The  year  1845  marks  an  especially  convenient  time  at  which  to 
pause  and  summarize  the  state  of  American  prisons,  and  to  conclude 
this  study  of  the  formative  era  of  American  penology.  It  was  in 
the  year  1844  that  the  Prison  Association  of  New  York  was  founded, 
bringing  into  the  field  of  prison  reform  an  organization  of  repre- 
sentative citizens  of  New  York,  who  adhered  to  neither  the  Auburn 
nor  to  the  Pennsylvania  system,  but  sought  to  understand  the 
essentials  of  adequate  prison  management,  and  also  to  effect  the 
betterment  of  prison  conditions.  In  the  year  1845,  the  Massachu- 
setts Society  in  Aid  of  Discharged  Convicts  was  formed,  which 
co-operated  with  the  State  Agent  in  the  relief  of  prisoners  released 
from  prison.  In  1844  and  1845  appeared  the  first  two  editions  of 
Dorothea  Lynde  Dix  's  * '  Remarks  on  Prisons  and  Prison  Discipline , 
in  the  United  States,"  an  acute  analysis  of  prison  conditions  for 
the  general  reader. 

The  Pennsylvania  Society  for  the  Alleviation  of  the  Miseries  of 
Public  Prisons  inaugurated  in  1845  the  publication  of  a  quarterly 
magazine,  thus  abandoning  their  passive  and  almost  sacrificial 
attitude  toward  the  vicious  and  persistent  attacks  upon  the  Penn- 
sylvania system,  made  in  the  annual  reports  of  the  Boston  Prison 
Discipline  Society,  and  particularly  by  the  Reverend  Louis  Dwight, 
its  militant  and  highly  biased  secretary.  It  was  in  this  period  that 
for  the  first  time  Mr.  Dwight  was  called  severely  to  account  for  his 
constant  championship  of  the  Auburn  system,  and  for  his  bitter 
opposition  to  anything  that  came  out  of  the  Pennsylvania  system. 
The  first  serious  attack  from  within  the  Boston  Society  was  being 
led  by  Doctor  S.  G.  Howe  and  Charles  Sumner,  who  challenged  not 
only  the  wisdom  and  the  judgment  of  Mr.  Dwight,  but  also  his 
intellectual  honesty  and  his  veracity. 

In  1846,  the  first  international  gathering  of  those  interested  in  or 
specializing  in  penology  was  held  at  Frankfort  on  the  Main.  The 
world 's  attention  was  being  co-operatively  directed  to  the  problems 
of  prisons.  In  the  antipodes,  the  daring  experiments  of  Maconochie, 
with  self-government  in  limited  measure  and  with  a  broad  inter- 
pretation of  the  honor  system,  had  already  been  tried  out. 
Obermaier  in  Bavaria  had  accomplished  extraordinary  results 
through  trusting  to  the  honor  of  prisoners.  In  short,  a  distinct 
penological  literature  was  being  built  up,  less  in  America  than  in 
Europe.  Germans,  French,  Belgians  and  English  were  plunged 
into  both  academic  and  practical  controversies  over  the  relative 
merits  of  the  Auburn  and  the  Pennsylvania  systems,  and  the  battle 
was  being  fought  on  the  other  side  in  a  far  more  scholarly  and 

[323] 


\ 


324  History  of  American  Prisons 

thorough  manner  than  had  been  the  case  in  the  land  of  their  origin. 
In  our  own  country,  principles  had  become  fairly  well  estab- 
lished; methods  were  fairly  well  fixed;  traditions  had  already 
formed.  It  was  now  more  a  period  of  development  of  the  details 
of  prison  discipline  rather  than  one  of  hardy  experimentation. 
Terms  of  daily  use  within  institutions  had  grown  definite.  Prison 
life  was  a  concrete  fact ;  prisons  had  come  to  stay ;  new  institutions 
were  springing  up  in  the  newer  States,  and  the  daily  routine  of 
prison  life  was  made  up  of  fixed  and  carefully  regulated  hours, 
tasks  and  motions.  The  roots  of  prison  methods  were  striking 
well  down  into  the  soil  of  customs  and  traditions. 

In  short,  in  New  York,  Boston  and  Philadelphia,  the  three  centers 
of  interest  in  prison  reform,  these  movements  above-mentioned 
marked  the  end  both  of  the  experimental  period  and  of  the  one-man 
domination  of  the  prison  reform  field,  which  since  1826  had  been 
virtually  ruled  by  Mr.  Dwight,  through  his  tireless  controversial 
activity,  his  visits  to  institutions,  his  pamphleteering,  and  the  wide 
circulation  of  the  Boston  Society's  annual  reports,  which  had 
circulation  not  only  throughout  the  United  States,  but  among  the 
prison  reform  groups  of  Europe.  The  new  era  would  mean  a 
searching  study  of  existing  prison  conditions,  and  a  definite  unwill- 
ingness to  receive  any  longer  predigested  facts.  The  initial  annual 
report  of  the  Prison  Association  of  New  York  exhibited  a  scholarly 
tendency  to  go  to  the  root  of  all  available  facts.  The  new  era 
marked  the  end  of  the  dominant  attention  given  to  administrative 
details  by  students  of  the  subject,  and  therefore  marked  the  begin- 
ning of  the  period  of  fact-study,  of  the  evolution  of  broad  principles, 
and  of  the  independent  thinking  of  different  groups,  culminating 
within  a  quarter  century  in  the  coming  of  Enoch  C.  Wines,  of 
Zebulon  R.  Brockway,  of  Frank  Sanborn,  and  of  the  first  meeting 
of  the  National  Prison  Association  in  Cincinnati  in  1870,  after 
which  grew  rapidly  the  movement  for  the  establishment  in  the 
United  States  of  the  reformatory  system  of  treatment  of  young 
men,  initiated  in  the  New  York  State  Reformatory  at  Elmira  in 
1876. 

This  decade  from  1840  to  1850  is  therefore  the  period  of  the  rise 
of  a  third  conspicuous  wave  in  prison  reform.  The  first  period  had 
extended  from  1787  to  approximately  1820,  and  it  was  marked  by 
the  establishment,  in  1787,  of  the  Philadelphia  Society  for  the 
Alleviating  of  the  Miseries  of  Public  Prisons,  the  opening  of  the 
Walnut  Street  Prison  in  1790,  and  the  establishment  of  the  State 
Prison  in  the  city  of  New  York  in  1797.  The  first  period  had  been 
marked  also  by  the  philanthropic  interest  and  activity  of  men  like 
Benjamin  Rush,  Caleb  Lownes,  William  Bradford  of  Philadelphia 
and  Thomas  Eddy  of  New  York.  The  Walnut  Street  Prison  in 
Philadelphia  standardized  the  construction  and  administration  of 
the  first  State  prisons,  as  to  night-rooms,  separate  punishment  cells 
for  solitary  confinement,  prison  labor,  compensation  of  prisoners, 
silence  at  work,  boards  of  inspectors,  officials,  etc.  Out  of  the 
example  of  the  Philadelphia  prison  developed,  in  close  imitation. 


History  of  American  Prisons  325 

the  first  State  prisons  of  other  States :  New  York,  1796 ;  Virginia, 
1800 ;  Massachusetts,  1804 ;  Vermont,  1808 ;  Maryland,  1811 ;  New 
Hampshire,  1812;  Ohio,  1816,  and  Auburn  prison  in  New  York, 
1816,  in  its  first  architectural  plan. 

This  earliest  period  brought  the  beginnings  of  a  systematic  prison 
reform  movement  in  the  founding  of  the  Philadelphia  Society  for 
the  Alleviating  of  the  Miseries  of  Public  Prisons  in  1787,  followed 
by  immediate  and  personal  attention  to  these  *' miseries. '  *  There 
ensued  considerable  prison  reform  propaganda,  through  pamphle- 
teering by  the  Society 's  members,  and  through  actual  participation 
in  the  administration  of  the  Walnut  Street  Prison. 

The  first  **sag"  in  this  earliest  period  was  not  slow  in  coming, 
occurring  as  early  as  1800  in  Philadelphia,  and  in  the  case  of  the 
other  prisons  within  a  few  years  of  their  openings.  Although  many 
principles  and  methods  evolved  by  the  Philadelphia  philanthropists 
were  marked  by  common  sense,  the  commingling  of  the  prisoners 
in  the  large  night-rooms,  added  to  the  inevitable  congestion  of  the 
prison  population,  as  the  State 's  population  increased,  precipitated 
the  downfall  of  the  first  prison  system.  The  prisons  reverted 
quickly  to  the  abhorrent  conditions  of  idleness,  debauchery,  extor- 
tion and  extravagance  that  had  marked  the  local  prisons  of  the 
pre-reform  period,  antedating  the  founding  of  the  Walnut  Street 
Prison.  In  Philadelphia  and  New  York,  outraged  public  opinion 
led  to  violent  protests,  and  also  by  1820,  to  the  possibility  of  a 
return  to  the  sanguinary  and  public  capital  and  corporal  punish- 
ments of  the  earlier  days,  for  which  prisons  were  to  have  been  a 
substitute. 

The  second  wave  of  prison  reform  swept  over  the  Eastern  and 
Middle  Atlantic  States  during  the  twenties  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  This  ten-year  period  from  1820  to  1830  was  marked  by 
the  evolution  of  the  two  separate  systems  of  prison  discipline, 
destined  to  become  subjects  of  heated  discussion  and  intense  rivalry. 
The  period  also  brought  with  it  the  erection  of  the  four  most 
conspicuous  prisons  in  early  American  prison  history  —  the  reno- 
vated prison  at  Auburn,  from  1819  on ;  Sing  Sing,  known  as  Mount 
Pleasant,  in  1825;  the  Connecticut  State  Prison  at  Wethersfield, 
in  1827 ;  and  the  Eastern.  Penitentiary  of  Pennsylvania,  from 
1829  on. 

The  desperate  moral  and  physical  conditions  in  the  old  prisons  at 
the  end  of  the  first  period  (1790-1820)  led  easily  to  the  extreme 
penological  antidotes  for  the  abuses  and  excesses  of  the  past,  and 
there  developed  the  two  prison  systems  above  mentioned,  those  of 
Auburn  and  of  Pennsylvania.  The  basis  of  both  systems  was  the 
prohibition  at  all  times  of  verbal  or  other  communication  between 
prisoners.  The  fundamental  difference  in  the  systems  lay  in  the 
methods  employed  to  secure  such  separation  of  prisoners  from  each 
other.  The  Eastern  Penitentiary  housed  its  prisoners  in  large  cells, 
one  in  a  cell,  and  never  allowed  them  to  leave  those  cells  save  for 
extreme  illness  or  on  discharge.  The  Auburn  system  housed  its 
prisoners  separately,  but  in  small  cells,  and  brought  the  prisoners 


326  History  of  American  Prisons 

together  in  the  workshops  during  the  day  under  strictest  rules  of 
absolute  silence.  The  Pennsylvania  system  required  its  inmates  to 
work  in  their  cells,  apart  from  each  other. 

In  construction,  therefore,  the  two  systems  differed.  The  Auburn 
plan  meant  primarily  a  prison  cellhouse  of  several  tiers  of  small 
cells,  built  back  to  back,  encased  in  an  enveloping  building.  The 
cells  were  incredibly  small.  The  Pennsylvania  plan  required  rooms 
of  adequate  size  for  uninterrupted  occupancy. 

The  second  period  of  prison  reform,  just  outlined,  brought,  as  did 
the  first  era,  the  establishment  of  a  prison  reform  society,  this  time 
in  Boston  —  the  Prison  Discipline  Society,  conducted  under  the 
militant  and  often  highly  biased  leadership  of  the  Reverend  Louis 
Dwight.  Arguing  successfully  on  the  grounds  of  the  greater 
economy,  safety  and  simplicity  of  the  Auburn  system,  and  on  the 
appealing  ground  of  the  constant  utilization  of  the  inmates  at 
productive  labor,  the  Boston  prison  society  played  a  dominant  role 
in  persuading  the  States  of  the  Union,  almost  one  after  the  other, 
to  adopt  the  Auburn  plan.  Only  in  Pennsylvania,  New  Jersey 
and  Rhode  Island  did  the  Pennsylvania  plan  find  adoption,  and  in 
the  two  latter  States  the  system  was  abandoned,  at  least  in  part, 
within  a  few  years. 

In  the  succeeding  decade,  1830  to  1840,  there  developed  no  such 
''sag"  and  failure  as  had  marked  the  first  period.  The  time  was 
one  of  experiment  and  development,  but  there  had  now  been  found 
a  fundamental  basis  upon  which  to  build.  The  prisons  had  become 
''going"  institutions.  The  first  traditions,  so  essential  in  the  con- 
duct of  a  well-systematized  institution,  were  being  fixed.  The 
proponents  of  each  system,  at  Auburn  and  Philadelphia,  were 
claiming  signal  success  in  their  efforts  to  establish  a  thorough- 
going prison  discipline.  The  Auburn  system  speedily  reduced  the 
expenses  of  maintenance  to  the  State,  and  many  prisons  actually 
began  to  produce  surpluses.  The  silence,  rigid  discipline  and 
security  were  a  wonderfully  grateful  relief  to  the  harassed  civic 
nerves  of  many  States,  after  the  excesses  of  the  previous  disorgan- 
ized and  debauched  prisons.  On  the  other  hand,  the  champions  of 
the  Pennsylvania  system  praised  similarly  their  results,  and 
particularly  the  complete  absence  of  any  contamination  of  prisoners 
J^hrough  physical  association. 

But,  along  with  the  acknowledged  successes  of  these  systems, 
there  developed  serious  faults,  visible  as  time  went  on.  The  self- 
supporting  or  surplus-producing  prisons  of  the  Auburn  type 
incurred,  or  ran  the  danger  of  incurring,  the  angry  hostility  of  the 
"mechanics,"  who  found  themselves  faced  by  the  competition  of 
prison-made  goods.  Particularly  in  New  York  was  the  claim 
violently  made  by  the  labor  groups  that  the  competition  of  the 
prisons  was  unfair  and  damaging.  Furthermore,  the  unbroken 
silence  in  Auburn-type  prisons  could,  in  most  instances,  be  main- 
tained only  by  the  inflicting  of  severe  corporal  punishments.  Flog- 
gings became  so  atrocious  in  Auburn,  and  especially  in  Sing  Sing, 
as  to  stagger  public  opinion  when  finally  revealed.     The  machine- 


History  of  American  Prisons  327 

like  regularity  of  prison  life  under  the  Auburn  system  led  also  to 
the  handling  of  prisoners  in  the  mass.  Efforts  at  reformation  were 
sacrificed  to  the  struggle  of  the  State  to  make  money  out  of  the 
prisons.  The  taxpayers  were  led  to  concern  themselves  primarily 
with  the  question  whether  the  prisons  cost  the  State  money,  or 
brought  money  to  the  State. 

Prisons  on  the  Pennsylvania  plan  were  not  without  weaknesses. 
Far  more  expensive  to  construct,  and  far  more  costly  to  maintain 
because  of  the  impossibility  of  permitting  the  associated  labor  of 
convicts,  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  was  with  increasing  frequency 
charged  with  a  higher  rate  of  deaths,  disease  and  insanity  than  was 
alleged  to  occur  in  prisons  of  the  Auburn  type.  Punishments  were 
milder,  to  be  sure,  because  most  infractions  of  rules  in  prison  arose 
from  the  contact  of  prisoners  with  each  other,  or  from  the  desire 
to  communicate. 

Hence  arose  the  belief,  by  1840,  that  the  prisons  were  failing  to 
fulfill  their  earlier  promises.  Particularly  disturbing  were  the 
scandals  that  broke  out  in  New  York  through  the  disclosures  of 
appalling  cruelties  at  Sing  Sing  Prison  early  in  the  fourth  decade 
of  the  century.  Out  of  this,  and  other  serious  conditions,  grew 
the  third  wave  of  prison  reform,  dating  from  approximately  1840. 
The  visits  of  Dorothea  Lynde  Dix  to  prisons  in  the  early  forties 
revealed  especially  the  deplorable  and  ignored  conditions  in  the 
secondary  prisons,  such  as  jails,  workhouses  and  houses  of  correc- 
tion, and  also  the  wretched  negligence  of  most  States  toward  their 
insane  prisoners. 

Moreover,  the  Prison  Association  of  New  York  came  into  exist- 
ence in  1844  through  the  suggestion  of  a  humane  member  of  the 
board  of  managers  of  Sing  Sing  Prison,  who  sought  private  help 
for  discharged  prisoners  whom  the  State  released  with  a  bare 
pittance,  after  a  miserable  and  disintegrating  prison  life.  From 
this  proposed  field  of  activity,  the  Prison  Association  quickly  swept 
on  to  a  general  concern  about  prison  conditions,  and  about  the 
plight  of  prisoners  before,  during  and  after  imprisonment  in  cor- 
rectional institutions.  At  the  same  time,  the  Quakers  of  the 
Philadelphia  Society  threw  off  the  pacifistic  tolerance  that  had 
inhibited  any  aggressive  resistance  to  the  attacks  of  the  Boston 
Society  upon  the  Pennsylvania  plan,  and  started  propaganda  of 
their  own,  for  their  system  in  particular,  and  for  a  philosophical 
attitude  toward  the  problems  of  prison  reform  in  general. 

This  third  era,  in  the  midst  of  which  our  study  of  prison  adminis- 
tration closes,  affords  us  therefore  an  especially  favorable  point 
from  which  to  attempt  a  more  general  survey  of  prison  conditions 
a  half-century  after  the  opening  of  the  first  State  prison  on 
Walnut  Street.  We  find  the  two  great  systems,  namely,  the  silent 
system  of  Auburn,  and  the  separate  system  of  Pennsylvania.  The 
best  types  of  the  separate  system  were  the  Eastern  and  the  Western 
Penitentiaries  of  Pennsylvania.  In  the  secondary  institutions,  the 
separate  system  had  been  best  developed  in  the  county  prisons  in 
Dauphin  County,  and  Chester  County,  Pennsylvania,  and  in  the 


328  History  of  American  Prisons 

Moyamensing  prison  in  Philadelphia  County.  The  best  types  of 
the  separate  system  were  Auburn,  Wethersfield,  and  Charlestown, 
Massachusetts,  and  perhaps  Baltimore.  The  silent  system  was  also 
well  represented  in  the  county  jails  of  Hartford  and  New  Haven 
in  Connecticut,  and  in  the  House  of  Correction  at  South  Boston 
in  Massachusetts. 

The  State  prisons  were  practically  the  only  correctional  institu- 
tions in  which  management  had  actually  developed  into  system. 
County  and  local  prisons  were  almost  without  exception  the  centers 
of  callous,  unsystematic  and  ignorant  confinement  of  inmates.  In 
the  State  prisons  themselves,  there  were,  varying  degrees  of  effi- 
ciency and  humanity.  Industrial  productiveness  was  found,  under 
the  Auburn  plan,  coupled  often  with  bloody  atrocities  and  moral 
corruption,  as  at  Sing  Sing.  The  basic  principles  of  the  two  sys- 
tems, in  the  prisons  of  Auburn  and  Pennsylvania,  were  not  of 
themselves  inhuman,  in  the  light  of  the  time,  and  an  alleged,  though 
subordinate,  purpose  of  the  prisons  was  reformation ;  but  the  modes 
of  daily  operation  were  conditioned  by  the  nature  of  the 
administrative  authorities. 

Striking  differences  in  methods  of  management  prevailed.  In  the 
House  of  Correction  at  South  Boston,  not  a  blow  had  been  struck 
upon  a  prisoner,  it  was  claimed,  for  over  a  decade,  and  no  weapons 
were  carried  by  keepers.  The  Connecticut  and  Massachusetts  State 
prisons  were  operated  with  a  minimum  of  corporal  punishment. 
On  the  other  hand.  Sing  Sing  Prison  gave,  in  some  months  of  1843, 
as  many  as  3,000  lashes  a  month.  The  larger  the  prisons,  the  more 
likelihood,  and  apparently  the  more  necessity,  there  was  of  rigorous 
punishments,  because  of  the  far  greater  difficulty  of  preserving 
constant  order  and  silence. 

But  the  trend  of  all  prisons  was  strongly  toward  the  reduction  of 
the  use  of  the  lash,  and  toward  an  increase  in  the  relatively  more 
humane  solitary  confinement  in  dark  cells.  The  ''shower  bath'* 
or  ducking  came  into  more  general  use.  The  ''gag"  was  seldom 
used,  but  at  Sing  Sing,  where  the  lash  was  not  used  upon  women, 
the  gag  was  sometimes  employed  upon  women;  straight- jackets 
were  employed  upon  refractory  prisoners.  Reduction  of  meals  to 
a  bread  and  water  diet  was  common. 

Public  opinion  upheld  corporal  punishment,  but  not  its  develop- 
ment to  an  extraordinary  degree.  Floggings  were  customary 
outside  of  prison,  in  the  navy,  the  schoolhouse  and  the  home. 
Complete  abandonment  of  similar  practices  in  the  prisons  was  not 
advocated,  and  yet  certain  wardens  prided  themselves  upon  their 
ability  to  get  along  without  the  use  of  the  ' '  cat. ' '  Even  Dorothea 
Dix  conceded  that  for  especially  refractory  cases  the  lash  had  to 
be  used  as  a  last  resort. 

Security  against  escape  by  inmates,  and  productiveness  of  labor 
of  inmates,  were  the  two  main  demands  of  the  law-making  and 
appropriation-making  bodies.  The  self-supporting  prison  was 
praised,  and  the  prison  that  returned  a  surplus  was  held  up  to 
public  admiration.     Encouragement  of  this  attitude  of  the  public 


History  of  American  Prisons  329 

mind  was  fostered  regularly  by  the  Prison  Discipline  Society's 
reports  from  Boston.  The  achievement  of  these  two  ends  led,  in  the 
prisons  operating  under  the  silent  system,  to  the  constant  rigorous 
guarding  of  inmates,  and  to  a  constant  driving  of  the  inmate  forces 
to  the  one  end  of  turning  out  the  maximum  of  commercially  valu- 
able products.  The  two  chief  phases  of  prison  administration, 
therefore,  were  those  connected  with  security  and  industry.  The 
public  must  be  protected  from  the  criminal,  and  the  taxpayer 
must  be  protected  from  any  unnecessary  drain  upon  his 
pocketbook. 

Security  against  criminals  was  to  be  obtained  by  imprisonment, 
by  severity  of  treatment,  and  by  the  deterrence  of  potential  crim- 
inals on  the  outside.  All  phases  of  imprisonment  were  therefore 
surrounded  with  factors  to  excite  dread  and  horror.  Public 
opinion  branded  the  criminal  as  an  outcast,  a  definitely  different 
person  from  the  great  body  of  law-abiding  citizens.  Religious 
dogmas  proclaimed  the  eternal  damnation  of  the  wicked  —  and  the 
criminals  were  all  wicked.  Hence,  the  naturalness  of  severe  and 
even  terrible  treatment  of  criminals. 

The  prisons  were  built  according  to  forbidding,  and  often  monu- 
mental, architecture.  The  facade  of  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  of 
Pennsylvania  was  at  the  time  of  its  construction  the  most  imposing 
architectural  effort  of  its  kind  in  the  United  States.  High  walls 
surrounded  almost  every  prison,  save  Sing  Sing,  and  the  walls  were 
patrolled  by  armed  guards,  who  would  shoot  to  kill.  The  public 
saw  nothing  of  what  passed  inside  the  prison,  save  when  admitted 
at  regular  hours  upon  payment  of  a  small  fee,  which  permitted  them 
to  gaze  upon  the  inmates  as  upon  the  members  of  a  human 
menagerie. 

Security  also  demanded  heavy  masonry  in  prison  buildings. 
Stone  was  the  common  material  of  construction.  Cells,  in  prisons 
of  the  Auburn  type,  were  ''constructed  for  the  one  great  object  of 
securely  packing,  in  the  most  economical  manner,  the  greatest  num- 
ber of  human  beings  in  the  smallest  possible  space."  The  most 
elementary  sanitary  requirements  were  neglected  —  but  the  prison- 
ers were  thus  held  safe  against  escape.  The  solid  masonry  of  the 
cells  sweated  trickling  streams  of  moisture  on  damp  mornings,  after 
a  night  of  unventilated  and  noxious  imprisonment  of  hundreds  of 
human  beings  in  catacomb-like  ''apartments,"  7  feet  long,  3  feet 
6  inches  wide,  and  7  feet  high.  But  society  was  thus  protected 
against  the  escape  of  wild  criminals.  The  darkness  within  the 
cells  was  such  as  to  bar  the  reading  of  books  when  day-light  had 
passed  —  but  the  intervening  bars  prevented  the  outbreak  of  the 
enemies  of  society.  The  gross  ignorance  of  the  age  as  to  the  prin- 
ciples of  ventilation  led  to  miserably  unaired,  disease-breeding, 
clammy  cells  —  but  the  dangers  of  escape  were  thus  minimized. 

The  necessity  of  perpetual  security  led  also  to  the  government  of 
the  prisoners  at  all  time  en  masse.  All  movements  were  made  in 
numbers,  when  possible.  At  all  times,  when  prisoners  were  in 
groups,  as  in  the  workhouses,  the  supervision  was  vigilant  and 


330  History  of  American  Prisons 

unrelenting.  Separation  of  the  individual  prisoner  from  any  possi- 
ble contact  with  his  neighbor  was  regarded  as  imperative.  Hence 
the  rule  of  perpetual  silence.  Hence  the  feeding  of  the  prisoners  in 
their  cells.  Some  prisons,  as  in  the  case  of  Auburn,  used  a  common 
messhall,  but  this  was  considered  to  be  fraught  with  greater  danger, 
and  even  in  these  messhalls,  the  benches  were  so  arranged  that  all 
prisoners  faced  in  the  same  direction.  No  conversation  was  toler- 
ated, and  severe  punishment  attended  any  attempt  at  communica- 
tion. But  talking  was  never  stamped  out.  Mass  movements  of 
prisoners  were  reduced  to  a  minimum.  Humans  were  driven  like 
animals.  The  march  to  and  from  the  workshops  and  the  cells  was 
the  only  exercise  had  by  the  inmates.  The  idea  of  recreation  had 
not  penetrated  into  most  prisons  in  any  form. 

In  prisons  on  the  ''separate"  plan,  like  the  Eastern  Penitentiary, 
this  mass  movement  naturally  did  not  occur.  Exercise  —  regarded 
as  necessary  in  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  —  was  had  in  the  little 
separate  yards  attached  to  the  ground-floor  cells,  or  in  adjacent 
cells  on  the  upper  floor.  But  the  New  Jersey  State  Prison,  the 
erection  of  which  began  in  Trenton  in  1833,  was  without  provision 
for  exercise  yards.  The  guarding  of  prisoners  in  institutions  of 
the  separate  type  was  far  easier  than  in  the  Auburn-type  prisons. 
The  escape  of  a  prisoner  from  any  prison,  in  the  era  from  1825  to 
1845,  was  extremely  rare. 

Security  and  intimidation  demanded,  further,  the  inhibition  of 
any  special  mental  activity  of  a  secular  nature.  The  prisoner  was 
barred  almost  absolutely  from  knowledge  of  the  outside  world.  It 
had  practically  ceased  to  exist  for  him  when  he  entered  the  prison. 
Thus  would  he  fail  to  have  disturbing  influences  to  plot  escapes; 
thus  would  he  appreciate  the  dire  fact  that  the  wages  of  sin  were  a 
living  death ;  thus  would  the  world  outside  understand  the  horrible 
consequences  of  crime.  No  letters  reached  the  prisoner.  Rarely 
were  his  most  intimate  friends  allowed  to  visit  him.  Never  might 
he  talk  with  his  visitor  without  the  presence  of  an  eavesdropping 
guard.  Never  was  news  of  secular  events  allowed  to  penetrate  into 
the  prison.  The  prison  world  was  cut  off  from  the  world  outside. 
At  long  intervals  the  prisoner  might  write  to  a  member  of  his 
family,  but  no  return  letters  were  allowed  him. 

In  short,  two  test  questions  applied  to  all  activities  of  the  prisons 
of  the  Auburn  type.  Is  the  prison  safe  ?  Is  the  prison  economical  ? 
Economy  built  cells  without  running  water  or  water-closets.  The 
bare  necessities  of  existence  were  admitted  to  the  cells,  although 
the  inmate  passed  approximately  fourteen  hours  a  day  cooped  up 
in  these  extremely  small  places.  Beds  were  of  wood,  and  infested 
often  with  vermin.  Sheets  and  pillow-cases  were  rare.  Blankets 
were  filthy  and  insufficient.  Heating  was  done  mainly  by  stoves 
in  the  corridors.  Extremes  of  temperature  were  inevitable  in 
winter.  Some  cells  were  hot  and  stifling,  and  some  were  cold,  frigid 
and  wholly  uncomfortable.  The  windows  in  the  prisons  being 
closed  to   save  the  heat,  ventilation  conditions   were  frequently 


History  of  American  Prisons  331 

intolerable.  Prisons  of  the  Pennsylvania  type  were  generally 
heated  by  iron  tubes  containing  hot  water  or  steam  from  a  central 
source. 

The  inmate  in  prisons  of  the  Auburn  type  suffered  from  a  per- 
petual round  of  inconveniences.  The  absence  of  running  water  in 
his  cell  reduced  his  chances  of  adequate  washing  of  face,  hands  and 
body.  Intensely  disagreeable  body  odors  were  a  frequent  cause  of 
complaint  in  the  cell  houses.  The  water  supply  in  most  prisons  was 
quite  insufficient.  Sing  Sing  Prison  never  had  pure  water  in  this 
period.  The  Rhode  Island  State  Prison  allowed  a  warm  bath  once 
in  three  months.  Occasionally,  when  the  prison  might  be  located 
on  the  water  front,  as  at  Sing  Sing  or  Charlestown,  Massachusetts, 
the  inmates  were  allowed  at  intervals  a  plunge.  Inmates  washed  in 
the  shops.  No  water  was  carried  into  the  cells  save  for  drinking 
purposes  —  and  very  little  of  that.  Bath  tubs  were  rare  in  prisons. 
Crude  shower  baths  were  sometimes  available.  In  the  Eastern 
Penitentiary,  however,  in  addition  to  cold  water  bathing  in  the 
cells,  where  each  prisoner  had  a  tub,  a  wash-basin,  soap  and  towels, 
there  was  provision  for  a  warm  bath  once  a  week  by  steam-heated 
shower  baths  in  separate  cells. 

In  most  prisons  of  the  Auburn  type,  inmates  ate  in  their  cells. 
The  food  was  served  necessarily  luke-warm  or  cold.  The  cells  be- 
came infested  with  vermin,  because  of  the  accumulated  dirt  and 
crumbs.  Most  disagreeable  odors  became  common.  There  was 
little  airing  of  bedding  or  clothes,  and  less  washing  of  them. 

This  was  the  day  of  crude  lights.  Individual  cells  of  prisons 
were  not  lighted.  Candles  were  allowed  in  the  Eastern  Peniten- 
tiary as  a  privilege,  or  when  additional  labor  had  to  be  done  after 
dark.  Oil  lights  hanging  in  the  corridors  in  Auburn-type  prisons, 
made  the  darkness  almost  more  visible.  Hence  the  custom  of  work- 
ing prisoners  from  sun-up  to  sun-down,  six  days  in  the  week,  the 
only  alternative  in  the  prisoner's  life  being  the  idlness  of  the  cell. 
Those  who  could  read,  and  desired  to,  found  their  only  available 
time  the  intervals  of  meal-times  during  the  day,  and  the  Sundays, 
unbroken  save  for  the  chapel  services  or  Sunday  school.  The 
libraries  of  the  prisons,  when  existing  at  all,  possessed  a  few  moral 
and  often  antiquated  volumes. 

The  prisoner's  clothing  was  crude,  but  generally  sufficient,  al- 
though little  attention  was  given  to  his  garb.  The  inmates,  marched 
at  times  of  necessity  through  rain  and  snow  to  and  from  the  shops 
and  cells,  had  no  changes  of  garments.  They  dried  their  wet 
garments  in  the  narrow  cells,  or  in  the  corridors,  with  resulting 
dampness  and  intolerable  odors. 

A  distinctive  garb  was  worn,  whether  of  alternate  black  and 
white  stripes,  or  a  parti-colored  costume.  For  a  distinctive  mark, 
the  half  of  the  head  was  sometimes  shaved. 

The  chief  positive  daily  activity  of  the  prisons  was  the  manu- 
facturing of  products  for  sale  in  the  open  market.  All  prisons 
aimed  to  reduce  by  this  means  the  costs  of  maintenance  and 
improvements.     The  most  lucrative  method  of  employing  convicts 


332  History  of  American  Prisons 

was  through  the  letting  out  of  the  labor  of  the  convicts  to  contrac- 
tors who  paid  a  fixed  sum  for  the  labor  of  the  inmates,  supervised 
the  manufacturing,  furnished  the  materials,  and  received  the  fin- 
ished product.  Another  method  of  utilizing  the  labor  of  inmates  was 
by  the  piece-price  system,  whereby  the  prison  sold  the  completed 
article  to  the  contractor  at  a  stipulated  price.  Some  prisons  sold 
their  own  products  in  the  open  market,  by  what  is  now  called  the 
State-account  system.  Kentucky's  State  prison  was  leased  out  to 
one  man  to  operate,  and  later  to  a  firm. 

The  prisons  of  the  Auburn  type  showed  higher  earning  capacity, 
due  to  the  utilization  of  the  inmates  in  workshops.  From  1828  to 
1841,  Auburn  Prison  produced  enough  to  support  itself,  pay  all 
salaries  of  officers,  except  in  1837-38,  and  except  in  those  two  years 
produced  a  total  surplus  of  $69,460.  Sing  Sing,  Massachusetts, 
Ohio  and  Connecticut  made  very  favorable  financial  showings,  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  "separate  prisons"  were  far  from  self- 
supporting,  a  fact  that  was  forever  ''rubbed  in"  publicly  by  the 
reports  of  the  Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society.  The  Eastern 
Penitentiary  failed  even  to  publish  annual  financial  statements. 

Serious  objections,  from  the  economic  standpoint,  were  raised  in 
the  State  of  New  York  during  the  thirties  and  early  forties  against 
contract  labor  of  prisoners,  but  even  there  with  little  effect  upon 
the  practice.  The  ' '  mechanics, ' '  the  forerunners  of  organized  labor, 
objected  on  the  ground  that  contract  labor  lowered  prices,  created 
an  oversupply  in  certain  industries,  established  unfair  competition, 
and  crowded  out  free  labor  into  other  occupations.  Also  it  was 
claimed  that  the  prisons  favored  with  considerable  financial  profits 
in  this  manner  the  lucky  contractors,  gave  opportunity  for  favor- 
itism in  the  letting  of  contracts,  taught  convicts  trades  to  the 
detriment  of  free  mechanics,  and  developed  apprentices  out  of  the 
criminal  classes. 

Successive  legislative  committees  in  New  York  tried  to  argue  away 
or  to  gloss  over  the  issues.  It  was  held  that  the  competition  of 
prison  labor  with  free  labor  was  much  overestimated;  that  the 
prison  trades  were  few  which  competed ;  that  the  mechanics  them- 
selves had  the  opportunity  to  bid  for  contracts ;  that  the  mechanics 
desired  to  stifle  all  industry  in  prison  (which  was  in  a  way  the 
truth)  ;  that  the  public  in  general  demanded  that  prisons  pay  their 
way;  that  inmates  should  learn  in  prison  to  be  self-supporting,  in 
order  not  to  revert  later  to  crime ;  and  that  idleness  would  be  the 
worst  and  most  inhuman  treatment  of  prisoners.  The  mechanics, 
it  was  said  with  reason,  offered  no  practical  constructive  suggestions 
in  line  with  the  humane  treatment  of  prisoners,  and  proposed  either 
ira.ii.'iiii.ui.iitiun.  which  was  impraciicabie.  or  the  abandonment  of 
pracT.i('..^.!iv  an  inausrry  ana  the  setimsr-up  of  creneral  idleness  and 
consequent  disorder  and  aemoralization. 

Concessions  to  the  mechanics  were  made  in  the  State  of  New 
York,  first  in  1835  by  restricting  somewhat  the  variety  of  prison 
occupations,  making  the  letting  of  contracts  more  public,  and 
limiting?  the  number  of  convicts  to  a  trade.    Foreign  industries  of 


History  of  American  Prisons  333 

silk-growing  and  weaving  were  to  be  introduced.  No  material 
change  occurred,  however.  Again  in  1845,  a  new  prison  was  estab- 
lished in  Dannemora  in  the  Adirondacks,  not  far  from  Plattsburg, 
called  Clinton  Prison,  where  only  mining  operations  were  to  be 
conducted,  as  non-competitive  with  the  mechanics.  But  in  other"] 
States  than  New  York,  the  broad  problems  of  contract  labor,  later 
to  be  among  the  most  complicated  and  troublesome  of  prison 
problems,  had  hardly  risen  by  1845.  At  this  time,  the  prisons  had 
been  in  successful  financial  operation  but  relatively  few  years,  and . 
the  pressure  of  convict  labor  was  not  yet  an  acute  issue.  J 

The  general  public  knew  little  of  prison  conditions  and  problems. 
The  abolition  of  convict  labor  was  little  urged  for  any  reason  of  its 
competition  with  free  labor,  and  for  its  injustice  to  prisoners. 
To-day,  in  1921,  convict  contract  labor  is  opposed  chiefly  because 
it  is  a  form  of  slavery  —  a  method  of  selling  the  actual  daily  labor 
of  prisoners  in  servitude  to  the  highest  bidder,  and  for  private  gain. 
It  is  opposed,  also,  because  it  brings  into  the  prison  the  contractor, 
who  to  an  extent  divides  authority  over  the  convicts  with  the  prison 
executive.  The  strong  argument  of  the  present  day,  that  prisoners 
are  not  duly  recompensed  for  their  labor  within  prison  walls,  was 
not  urged  in  1840  to  1845.  There  was  a  total  lack  of  interest  on  the 
part  of  the  prison  reformers  and  the  public  in  any  regular  wage- 
scale  compensation  of  prisoners,  for  the  following  reasons: 

It  was  held  that  punishment,  to  be  sufficient,  must  not  involve 
any  remuneration  for  the  suffering  endured.  The  measure  of 
punishment  once  defined,  there  should  be  no  alleviating  circum- 
stances to  that  punishment.  Since  the  prisoner  had  not  been  willing 
to  work  honestly  for  a  living  with  the  inducement  of  wages  on  the 
outside,  he  should  work  involuntarily  within  prison  for  no  wages. 
Otherwise,  there  w^as  the  same  incentive  to  work  inside  the  prison 
as  on  the  outside,  and  the  deterrent  effect  of  the  prison  would  be 
lost.  The  convict  was  sent  to  prison  ''at  hard  labor."  Few 
suggestions  of  financial  compensation  to  prisoners  are  to  be  found 
in  the  history  of  this  period.  Not  since  the  earliest  years  of  the 
first  State  prisons  —  Walnut  Street,  Newgate  in  New  York,  and 
Baltimore  —  had  substantial  efforts  been  made  to  establish  a  wage- 
scale  in  prison. 

The  prisoner's  time  was  forfeit  to  the  State.  His  labor  was  a 
part  of  that  forfeit.  He  was  the  slave  of  the  State.  He  had 
forfeited  citizenship.  He  was  an  outcast.  Furthermore,  grave  doubt 
prevailed  as  to  the  desirability  of  any  sizeable  sums  accruing  to 
the  convict  on  his  discharge  from  prison.  Such  money  would  aid 
dissolute  criminals,  after  discharge,  to  perpetuate  further  crimes,^ 
and  would  enable  them  to  exist  without  the  immediate  application 
to  work  and  to  the  earniner  of  an  honest  livelihood,  that  was  essential 
It  reieasea  convicts  were  not  to  oe  quicKiy  lempced  vm^'iL  into 
crime.  Therefore  the  State  was  not  interested  in  establishing  regu- 
lar compensation  for  labor  performed,  but  paid  to  the  prisoner 
on  discharge  a  pittance  of  a  few  dollars  to  enable  him  to  reach  the 
community  from  which  he  had  been  committed. 


334  History  of  American  Prisons 

However,  the  necessity  felt  by  the  contractors  to  speed  up  the 
convicts  led  early  to  the  establishment  of  the  ''overstent"  or  over- 
stint  for  overtime  work.  This  bonus,  paid  to  the  convicts  who  thus 
did  extra  work  after  the  completion  of  their  stint,  was  of  very 
varying  amount.  Prisoners  left  their  institutions  with  from  a  few 
dollars  to  several  hundreds,  according  to  ability  and  length  of 
imprisonment.  There  was  relatively  little  inducement  to  prisoners 
to  lay  by  large  earnings  through  over-stint.  No  commissaries  were 
maintained,  at  which  inmates  might  make  purchases  to  supplement 
the  prison  food  or  equipment.  Two  principles  in  particular  gov- 
erned the  administration  of  the  prisons  on  the  Auburn  plan.  First, 
that  force  should  be  recognized  as  the  only  successful  means  of 
government,  and  secondly,  that  all  prisoners  should  be  treated 
alike.  Therefore,  no  privileges  of  purchase,  or  of  favoritism 
through  the  possession  of  money,  should  be  set  up.  Moreover,  the 
connection  between  the  prisoner  and  his  family  that  had  been  left 
behind  was  almost  severed,  and  he  had  little  to  remind  him  of  his 
social  obligation  to  contribute  toward  their  support.  Indeed,  he 
had  practically  no  responsibility,  and  the  whole  prison  regime  was 
seemingly  devised  to  eliminate  or  crush  out  any  feeling  of  individual 
responsibility  within  him,  save  to  obey  the  rules  that  were  made,  not 
for  him  alone,  but  for  all. 

However,  compensation  of  another  kind,  for  good  conduct  and 
for  industry,  became  practically  a  system  in  all  American  prisons. 
I  refer  to  the  granting  of  pardons  to  prisoners  by  the  governor  of 
the  State.  The  reasons  for  such  granting  ranged  from  legitimate 
rewards  for  industry  and  good  conduct  to  the  responses  to  political 
machinations,  or  to  the  apparent  necessity  of  clearing  out  the  con- 
gested prisons  in  order  to  give  a  place  to  newcomers.  The  abuse  of 
the  pardoning  power  had  been  emphasized,  criticised  and  denounced 
for  more  than  a  half  century,  at  the  end  of  the  period  that  we  have 
been  considering.  The  pardon  was  the  goal  or  the  bait,  ever  before 
the  prisoner's  eyes.  One  in  every  nine  persons  was  pardoned  out 
of  Auburn  Prison  between  1824  and  1829;  one  in  18  from  the 
Virginia  State  Penitentiary  between  1820  and  1829 ;  one  in  17  from 
the  Massachusetts  State  Prison  between  1820  and  1829,  and  one  in 
15  from  the  State  Prison  of  New  Hampshire  in  the  same  period. 

Statistics  of  given  intervals  in  the  thirties  and  forties  of  the 
nineteenth  century  showed  wide  variations  in  these  acts  of  execu- 
tive clemency.  The  larger  prisons,  like  those  of  Auburn,  Sing  Sing 
and  Charlestown,  showed  pardons  in  ratios  of  from  1  to  20,  to 
1  to  35.  Vermont,  on  the  other  hand,  pardoned  in  1843  1  to  every 
8;  Kentucky  in  1840  and  1842,  1  to  every  5;  Ohio  in  1839  and 
1843,  1  to  every  11.  The  average  of  all  prisons,  and  of  many  differ- 
ent intervals  between  1830  and  1843,  showed  a  pardoning  of  1 
inmate  in  every  19.  Since  this  method  of  discharging  was  not  the 
only  method  of  release,  but  was  employed  in  addition  to  regular 
release  through  expiration  of  sentence,  it  played  an  important  part 
not  only  in  reducing  the  prison  population,  but  also  in  furnishing 
an  incentive  to  the  prisoner  to  good  conduct  and  good  work. 


History  of  American  Prisons  335 

The  average  length  of  sentences  to  State  prison  was  considerable. 
Taking  the  years  1839,  1840  and  1841  as  a  basis  for  statistics,  we 
find  the  average  length  of  sentences  ranged  from  2  years  and  5 
months  in  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  of  Pennsylvania  to  7  years  and 
3  months  in  the  Connecticut  State  Prison.  The  Prison  Association 
of  New  York  showed  by  statistics  in  1846  the  great  disparity  of 
sentences  for  the  same  offense,  but  regarded  this  as  not  so  great  an 
evil  as  the  length  of  many  of  the  sentences.  The  average  length 
of  sentences,  from  the  figures  of  18  prisons,  and  applying  to  the 
period  between  1840  and  1846,  was  4  years,  11  months  and  18  days. 
The  shortest  sentence  was  three  months.  The  longest  sentence  was 
of  course  for  life.  The  customary  minimum  sentence  was  for  one 
year.  Sentences  from  10  to  42  years  were  shown  to  be  the  maximum 
definite  sentences,  outside  of  life  sentences  in  the  several  prisons. 
There  was  no  exceptionally  large  number  of  life-term  inmates  in 
prison,  partly  because  the  pardoning  of  a  life-termer  was  actually 
more  probable,  after  a  span  of  from  seven  to  ten  years,  than  the 
pardoning  of  an  inmate  who  had  been  sentenced  to  10  or  more 
years  of  imprisonment. 

The  pardoning  power  of  itself  was  not  only  not  an  evil,  but  was 
a  necessity  in  an  age  without  the  use  of  the  principle  of  the  sys- 
tematic commutation  of  sentences  in  accordance  with  law.  But 
the  abuse  of  the  pardoning  power  was  a  serious  and  often 
demoralizing  evil. 

What  about  the  results  of  prison  treatment,  in  the  period  we  are 
considering  ?  The  test  of  a  prison 's  success  has  generally  been  held 
to  be  the  proportion  of  inmates,  who,  through  the  nature  of  the 
prison  treatment,  are  deterred  from  further  crime.  Cure  has  been 
held  to  be  demonstrated,  negatively,  by  the  subsquent  non-appear- 
ance of  the  said  inmates  in  any  correctional  institution.  Affirm- 
atively, by  the  proved  activity  of  the  discharged  prisoners  in  leading 
an  apparently  honest  life,  and  in  continuing  to  be  self-supporting. 
The  return  to  prison  for  a  subsequent  crime  is  called  * '  recidivism.  * ' 

The  tests  of  prison  treatment,  in  terms  of  subsequent  appearances 
in  correctional  institutions,  were  extremely  faulty.  Statistics  of 
recidivism  were  painfully  incomplete,  largely  because  they  could  not 
from  the  nature  of  the  case  be  obtained.  There  existed  not  only  no 
system  of  recording  physical  measurements  or  marks  of  identifi- 
cation of  inmates,  but  there  was  also  naturally  no  central  bureau 
of  records,  and  no  adequate  records.  The  era  was  one  of  building 
up  the  elements  of  prison  discipline  and  routine  —  not  one  of 
analyzing  prison  results  by  fine  tests  and  research.  Only  those 
statistics  based  on  the  recorded  experiences  of  a  single  prison  could 
be  prepared  regarding  recidivism  in  that  one  prison,  and  even  then 
the  evidence  was  largely  ** hearsay"  or  subjective.  Convicts  might 
have  served  previously  in  several  other  institutions,  and  might 
have  lived  a  long  life  of  crime  and  still  appear  in  prison  statistics 
as  first  offenders  in  the  prison  under  consideration. 


336  History  of  American  Prisons 

The  Massachusetts  State  Prison  showed  by  intermittent  statistics 
between  1820  and  1843  a  total  of  3,037  receptions  and  147  recom- 
mitments ;  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  2,818  receptions  and  139  recom- 
mitments. Such  figures  have  only  a  misleading  effect.  Indeed, 
statistics  compiled  at  various  times  throughout  the  nineteenth 
century  show  not  only  the  widest  variations,  but  also  elements  that 
make  them  hard  of  comparison  with  each  other.  It  would  be  most 
difficult  even  to-day  to  prove  by  any  statistics  of  recidivism  the 
success  or  failure  of  prisons  in  the  United  States  in  the  absence 
still  of  a  complete  central  bureau  of  identification. 

We  need  not  then  give  lengthy  consideration  to  the  seriously 
inadequate  statistics  of  the  early  periods.  Indeed,  the  term 
''reformation"  connoted  several  different  things,  but  usually  the 
word  meant  a  thorough  spiritual  conversion  of  the  prisoner,  as  well 
as  the  intention  to  lead  henceforth  a  law-abiding  life.  Elam  Lynds, 
the  warden  of  Auburn  and  Sing  Sing  prisons,  did  not  believe  in  the 
permanent  reformation  of  any  adult  convict.  Reports  from  many 
prisons,  between  1830  and  1840,  testified  to  the  presence  of  only 
occasional  ''reformations."  No  studies  of  scientific  thoroughness 
were  made,  to  determine  results.  An  occasional  survey  of  the  lives 
of  discharged  prisoners  was  made,  as  at  Auburn  prison  between 
1825  and  1830,  when,  by  letters  to  postmasters,  district  attorneys 
and  others.  Warden  Gershom  Powers  learned  that  of  160  prisoners 
released,  112  were  decidedly  steady  and  industrious,  while  12  others 
were  ' '  somewhat  reformed. ' ' 

Dorothea  Dix,  in  1845,  knew  of  no  person  who  had  uniformly 
kept  in  view  so  large  a  number  of  discharged  convicts  as  50  or  lOQ 
after  their  "enlargement"  from  any  prison,  for  two,  three,  or  five 
years.  In  general,  reformations  were  assumed  to  have  taken  place, 
if  the  prisoners  failed  to  return  to  prison.  We  must,  therefore, 
frankly  abandon  any  effort  to  determine  from  the  statistics  of 
"reformations"  the  relative  values  of  either  the  silent  or  the  sepa- 
rate systems,  or  of  individual  prisons  that  employed  these  systems. 
Moreover,  the  judgment  of  the  times  as  to  the  relative  success  of 
the  competing  systems  was  based  mainly,  not  on  possible  reforma- 
tions, but  on  such  tangible,  or  apparently  tangible  facts,  as  the 
routine  administration,  the  relative  proportion  of  sickness  and 
death,  cases  of  insanity,  provision  for  mental  and  moral  instruction, 
humane  treatment,  discipline,  industrial  productivity  and  the  like. 

We  have  thus  far  described  those  factors  of  prison  discipline 
which  were  employed  to  assure  security  and  intimidation,  obedience, 
and  industrial  productivity.  In  this  review,  the  prisoner  has 
appeared  as  a  slave  of  the  government,  a  thing  to  be  used,  a  person 
without  civic  rights,  a  convict  to  be  kept  from  escaping  and  con- 
tinuing thereby  his  crimes,  a  person  to  be  punished  for  any 
infraction  of  a  rigorous  system  of  discipline.  He  was  provided 
in  general  with  the  minimum  of  creature  necessities,  threatened  by 
harsh  and  often  ingeniously  cruel  punishments,  harassed  by  numer- 
ous and  frequent  positive  discomforts,  driven  to  work  from  sun-up 
to  sun-down  every  day  in  the  year  save  perhaps  the  Fourth  of 


History  of  American  Prisons  337 

July,  Thanksgiving,  and  Christmas,  locked  into  desperately  unsani- 
tary and  disease-breeding  cells  for  thirteen  or  fourteen  hours  a  day, 
and  for  practically  all  the  time  from  Saturday  night  to  Monday 
morning,  cut  off  from  the  world  of  friends  and  people  and  events, 
merged  into  a  body  of  outlaws,  and  ostracized  and  hated  by  society 
in  general. 

To  what  extent  did  the  prisons,  as  representatives  of  society '?* 
reaction  against  convicts,  make  provision  for  the  inmates  of  prisons 
as  reclaimable  human  beings  ?  What  measures  of  health,  of  educa- 
tion, of  religious  consolation,  of  other  civilizing  forces  were  utilized  ? 
Let  us  consider  first  the  provisions  of  health. 

Society  was  in  no  way  vitally  interested  in  the  extent  to  which 
the  prisons  of  the  period  made  provision  for  the  prisoner  as  a 
reclaimable  human  being.  The  illness  or  the  health  of  the  convict 
meant  little  to  the  world  outside.  But  the  administrator  of  a  prison 
was  interested  in  maintaining  a  favorable  health  rate,  because  the 
prison  labor  contractors  paid  the  State  only  for  the  services  of  the 
able-bodied.  Auburn,  Sing  Sing,  Massachusetts,  and  other  prisons 
drove  inmates  to  work  who  claimed  to  be  ill,  or  who  were  suspected 
of  feigning  insanity.  Many  of  the  most  terrible  records  of  cruelty 
in  this  period  center  about  such  practices.  Deaths  within  a  few 
hours  of  the  final  abandonment  of  work  testify  to  the  horrors  of  the 
practice. 

Little  systematic  medical  service  was  rendered  to  the  prisoners, 
and  still  more  infrequent  were  any  careful  studies  of  the  medical 
problems  of  prisons.  Doctor  Franklin  Bache  at  the  Eastern  Peni- 
tentiary, Doctor  Woodward  at  Wethersfield,  and  Doctor  Coleman  at 
Trenton,  were  exceptions  as  prison  physicians,  emphasizing  by  their 
very  concern  about  morbidity,  mortality  and  their  causes  the  very 
low  general  average  of  medical  services  in  prisons.  The  **  doctor '* 
came  for  a  few  hours,  and  irregularly ;  he  was  on  call  at  other  times, 
but  often  failed  to  arrive  in  time  to  save  life.  Prison  hospitals 
were  mainly  hit-or-miss  places  of  segregation  of  the  severely  sick, 
who  were  attended  by  inmate  *' nurses"  in  the  intervals  between 
the  visits  of  the  physician.  Of  these  ** nurses,"  gruesome  stories 
of  callousness  and  brutality  were  frequent.  Drugs  were  adminis- 
tered by  poorly  qualified  ''apothecaries"  or  by  inmates.  The 
physician's  salary  was  small,  he  was  held  to  no  professional  stand- 
ards, and  his  scientific  interest  was  generally  slight  or  wholly 
wanting.  It  may  safely  be  said  that  to  most  of  the  physicians,  the 
task  of  medical  and  surgical  service  to  the  convicts  was  not 
stimulating. 

The  hospital  was  regarded  by  the  prisoners  as  a  goal  to  be 
attained  if  possible,  but  only  because  their  ordinary  existence  was 
so  intolerable.  At  the  hospital  a  slightly  different  diet  could  be 
had.  Here  they  could  talk  —  in  the  prisons  of  the  Auburn  type  — 
with  each  other.  Here,  lewdness  and  immorality  flourished.  To 
counteract  the  tendency  to  attain  the  hospital,  severe  penalties  were 
affixed  to  feigned  illness,  and  admission  to  the  hospital  was  granted 
only  on  proof  that  was  often  so  adequate  as  to  bring  about  also  the 


338  History  of  American  Prisons 

speedy  death  of  the  patient,  because  of  the  delays  in  proper  medical 
or  surgical  treatment.  Resident  physicians  were  rare,  and  in  the' 
relatively  enlightened  Eastern  Penitentiary  there  was  no  resident 
physician  until  1842.  Hospital  records  in  most  prisons  were  so 
inadequate  as  to  give  a  wholly  imperfect  picture  of  prison  morbidity 
and  mortality. 

Several  facts  concerning  the  prevalence  of  diseases  stood  out 
prominently.  Consumption,  rheumatism,  coughs  and  colds  were 
the  prevailing  diseases  in  the  winter  months,  and  *' intermittent 
fevers,"  typhoid  and  dysentery  were  frequent  in  the  summers. 
Over  one-half  of  the  deaths  in  Auburn  prison  from  1817  to  1844 
were  from  ''some  form  of  diseased  lungs.''  Many  forms  of 
''scrofula"  developed,  and  were  attributed  by  the  Prison  Associa- 
tion of  New  York  in  1845  to  the  deplorable  lack  of  ventilation  in 

..  the  cells. 

But  despite  the  grossly  insanitary  physical  equipment  of  the 
prisons,  and  the  strikingly  inadequate  medical  service,  both 
Dorothea  Dix  and  an  investigating  committee  of  the  Prison  Associa- 
tion of  New  York  in  1845  and  1846  held  that,  on  the  whole, 
imprisonment  tended  to  increase  rather  than  decrease  the  chances 
of  life.  Regular  hours,  regular  diet,  and  the  entire  absence  of 
chances  for  dissipation,  coupled  with  necessarily  long  hours  of 
sleep,  seemed  to  more  than  offset  the  evils  of  bad  ventilation, 
cramped  and  clammy  cells,  the  extremes  of  temperature  in  the 
several  parts  of  the  prison,  and  the  wretched  physical  condition  of 
many  of  the  inmates  on  admission.  Dorothea  Dix,  after  several 
years  of  prison  visiting,  stated  that  the  prisoners  seemed  to  be  in 
quite  as  good  condition  as  those  men  who  worked  in  similar  trades 

i    at  free  labor. 

The  percentage  of  deaths,  in  most  prisons,  was  considered  low. 
For  many  years  the  Auburn-type  prisons  registered  approximately 
from  one  to  two  per  cent,  of  deaths  annually.  Virginia's  prison 
ran  an  abnormally  high  death  rate,  due  to  local  conditions.  The 
Eastern  and  Western  Penitentiaries  registered  a  somewhat  higher 
death  rate  than  did  Auburn,  Wethersfield  or  Massachusetts.  How- 
ever, a  most  important  factor  was  omitted  from  all  of  these  calcula- 
tions. The  number  of  inmates  pardoned  out  for  serious  ill  health, 
and  not  recorded  at  the  time  of  the  compilation  of  mortality  or 
morbidity  tables,  often  made  the  published  statistics  wholly  unreli- 
able as  an  accurate  picture  of  health  facts.  Furthermore,  a  much 
higher  percentage  of  negroes  in  the  population  of  the  Eastern 
Penitentiary  and  of  the  State  prisons  of  Maryland  and  Virginia 
contributed  to  the  higher  mortality  rates,  and  threw  out  the 
possibility  of  comparing  similar  statistics. 
A    Bitter   controversy   arose   as  to   the   morbidity,   mortality   and 

/|insanity  percentages  in  prisons  of  the  two  rival  types.  The  Auburn- 
type  prisons  scored  somewhat  lower  mortality  rates,  but  housed 
fewer  negroes.  Cases  of  illness  were  less  prominent  in  Auburn-type 
prisons,  but  at  the  Eastern  Penitentiary  the  exceptionally  well- 
trained  physician,  Doctor  Bache,  displayed  scientific  interest  in  his 


History  of  American  Prisons  339 

work,  and  gave  detailed  reports  of  his  studies  in  the  annual  reports 
of  the  prison.  At  the  close  of  the  period  that  we  are  now  consider- 
ing, both  the  Boston  and  the  New  York  prison  societies  were 
doubtful  as  to  the  relative  healthfulness  of  the  two  systems,  when 
conducted  under  the  best  conditions,  while  the  Philadelphia  prison 
reformers  were  convinced  of  the  good  morbidity  and  mortality 
records  of  their  local  prison.  The  leading  prison  administrators 
and  students  of  Europe,  who  had,  in  the  main,  made  long-distance 
studies  of  the  two  systems,  were  practically  a  unit  in  urging  the 
adoption  of  the  separate  system  of  confinement.  The  warfare, 
which  for  twenty  years  had  been  vehemently  waged  by  the  Boston 
Society  against  the  Pennsylvania  system,  with  health  facts  as  per- 
haps the  chief  supporting  argument,  apart  from  the  financial  facts 
or  hypotheses,  had  not  eventuated  in  much  more  than  a  drawn 
battle. 

There  was  similar  unclearness  of  statistics  regarding  the  presence 
and  seriousness  of  insanity  in  the  prisons.  Not  until  toward  the 
end  of  the  period  we  have  discussed  in  this  study  was  any  earnest 
effort  made  to  remove  from  the  State  prisons  the  insane,  though . 
agitation  for  their  removal  had  been  a  leading  feature  of  the  pro- 
gram of  the  Boston  Society  for  many  years.  Only  in  Massachusetts 
was  there  by  1845  a  good  system  of  the  transfer  of  the  insane  from 
the  prison  to  the  State  asylum.  Insanity  was  little  understood  as 
yet  even  by  the  medical  profession ;  its  treatment  through  kindness, 
the  striking  off  of  chains,  and  the  abolition  of  physical  punishment, 
was  new  and  not  well  established.  Laymen  knew  the  ailment  only 
as  it  was  manifested  in  ** crazy  people."  Many  private  families 
still  kept  their  insane  in  cages  on  their  own  property,  or  in  their 
own  homes.  Wardens  reported  to  the  Boston  Society,  in  response 
to  a  circular  letter,  that  only  '  *  here  and  there ' '  was  there  a  lunatic 
in  their  prison  population.  Some  prisons  stated  that  they  had  not 
had  a  single  lunatic  in  their  entire  history !  Pennsylvania  treated 
its  insane  in  the  separate  cells  of  the  prison,  to  which  cells  they 
were  admitted  on  entrance. 

Unquestionably,  there  was  much  unrecognized  insanity  in  the 
prisons.  ''Feigned  insanity"  was  a  frequent  diagnosis  for  the 
actual  disease.  Brutal  corporal  punishments  were  applied  as  cura- 
tives for  supposed  malingering  in  contract-labor  prisons.  Tragedies 
innumerable  and  unrecorded  occurred  without  question  among  the 
imprisoned  insane.  Much  of  the  incentive  to  brutal  punishments 
arose  undoubtedly  from  the  inability  of  the  mentally  sick  to  obey 
the  prison  rules,  and  perform  satisfactorily  the  stints  of  work  set  for 
them,  stints  that  were  frequently  severe,  even  for  the  able-minded. 

The  Eastern  Penitentiary  was  made  a  target  by  the  Boston 
Society  as  an  insanity-breeder,  on  the  assumption  that  ''solitary 
confinement, ' '  if  long  continued,  produced  madness.  Two  fallacies, 
however,  were  embraced  in  this  conclusion.  First,  the  Pennsylvania 
system  provided  for  separate,  but  not  solitary,  confinement  of  its 
inmates.  Visits  of  some  frequency  occurred  in  the  cells  of  the 
Eastern  Penitentiary,  not  only  from  the  prison  officers,  but  also 


340  History  of  American  Prisons 

from  the  representatives  of  the  prison  reform  society  of  Philadel- 
phia. Actual  solitary  confinement  had  occurred  in  Auburn  prison 
in  1822  and  1823,  and  had  produced  madness.  But  in  the  Eastern 
Penitentiary,  the  second  fallacy  of  the  Boston  argument  was  made 
clear  by  the  fact  that  only  in  the  annual  reports  of  the  Eastern 
Penitentiary  had  a  careful  and  scientifically-minded  physician 
recorded  and  discussed  with  apparent  sincerity  and  faithfulness  the 
manifestations  of  mental  disorder  within  the  institution.  This  very 
honesty  and  frankness  furnished  good  ammunition  to  hostile  critics, 
who  failed  to  emphasize  the  lack  of  similar  thorough  analysis  in 
institutions  of  the  Auburn  type. 

Nevertheless,  the  unbiased  student  of  the  period  must  derive  a 
cumulative  impression  from  the  assembled  facts  that  the  permanent 
segregation  of  inmates  in  separate  cells,  as  in  Philadelphia,  rendered 
the  prisoners  more  prone  to  mental  disorders  than  did  the  alternate 
association  and  separation  of  inmates  in  Auburn-type  prisons.  But 
insanity  was  a  very  troublesome  matter  to  all  intelligent  wardens, 
by  the  fifth  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century.  In  Sing  Sing,  in 
November,  1844,  31  of  the  688  convicts  were  recognized  as  insane. 
In  1843  and  1844,  27  convicts  had  been  admitted  to  the  Eastern 
Penitentiary  while  insane.  There  was  no  other  place  to  which 
criminal  insane  persons  could  readily  be  sent.  Private  and  public 
hospitals  for  the  insane  were  few,  congested,  and  did  not  take 
criminals.  The  prison  was  the  only  *'safe"  place  to  which  to 
send  the  criminal  insane. 

Prison  life  —  made  up  so  predominantly  of  silence  and  separation 
from  one 's  fellows  —  induced  masturbation  to  an  appalling  degree, 
broke  down  health,  developed  prison  psychoses,  and  undermined  the 
will.  In  many  inmates  of  the  prisons,  the  environment  inevitably 
produced  mental  diseases.  Moreover,  the  presence  in  the  prisons  of 
a  mentally  deficient  group,  not  insane,  but  ''lacking,"  the  feeble- 
minded and  often  incorrigible,  was  coming  to  be  recognized.  And 
there  was  as  yet  no  proper  place  for  their  treatment. 
f  The  above-outlined  efforts  to  reduce  illness,  insanity  and  death 
were  determined  probably  not  so  much  by  any  special  solicitude  for 
the  prisoner  as  a  man  as  by  the  prison 's  need  of  able-bodied  inmates. 
Prisons  had  grown  to  be  organized  institutions  because  the  abolition 
of  the  death  penalties  for  many  crimes  had  made  prisons  indispen- 
sable. They  were  to  be  places  of  punishment,  dread  and  hard  labor. 
Only  gradually,  and  often  reluctantly,  did  the  prisons  give  recogni- 
tion to  the  demands  of  the  prison  reformers  that  the  Gospel  and 
the  chaplain  should  have  a  definite  place  in  prison  discipline. 

Chaplains,  if  on  the  staff  of  the  prisons  at  all,  were  low-salaried 
intermittent,  and  often  quite  inefficient.  They  were  not  held  to  be 
among  the  indispensable  officials,  like  the  warden,  the  principal 
keeper  or  even  the  physician.  Many  prisons  had  no  regular  church 
service  on  Sunday ;  few  prisons  held  daily  chapel  services.  Often, 
in  the  absence  of  the  chaplain,  some  clergyman  from  the  vicinity 
officiated.  Sunday  schools  were  established  in  some  of  the  more 
highly  organized  prisons,  like  Auburn,  Wethersfield,  and  Massa- 


History  of  American  Prisons  341 

chusetts,    in    which    religious    instruction    was   given    mainly    by 
volunteer  citizens.    Dorothea  Dix  summed  up  the  situation  in  1845 
by  saying  that  except  in  the  Eastern  Penitentiary,  general  and 
moral  teaching  in  the  State  prisons  was  insufficiently  provided  for. 
The  chaplain  was  the  missionary  —  and  often  the  only  one  —  of 
the  prison.    He  conducted  the  service  on  Sunday.    When  there  was 
a  Sunday  School,  he  directed  it.    In  a  number  of  States  the  law 
required  him  to  make  daily  visits  to  the  prison,  and  to  converse 
with  the  convicts  in  their  cells.     His  eyes  were  to  be  fixed  on 
spiritual  things ;  he  was  not  to  be  actively  concerned  about  discipline 
or  abuses.     His  presence  was  undoubtedly  often  tolerated  by  the 
warden,  rather  than  desired.  fThe  warden  himself  seldom  played i 
the  part  of  an  active  reformer  of  his  inmates.     Administrative 
matters  mainly  engaged  the  attention  of  the  warden.    Only  wardens 
with  exceptional  personality  were  much  concerned  with  the  reforma- 
tive treatment  of  their  prisoners.     At  the  outset  of  the  Auburn 
system,  Elam  Lynds  set  a  standard  of  relentless  severity  of  treat- 
ment.   His  successor,  Gershom  Powers,  had  his  first  heart-to-heart 
talk  with  the  inmate  after  he  was  discharged.    On  the  other  hand, 
some  wardens,  like  Amos  Pilsbury,  combined  determined  disciplin- 
ary   methods    with    interest    in    their    charges.      But    even    at 
Wethersfield,  the  chaplain  in  the  early  forties  dared  to  urge  the 
warden  to  give  more  consideration  to  the  souls  of  the  inmates,  and 
less  to  the  making  of  money  for  the  State  out  of  their  bodies^ 
The  chaplain  was  also  practically  the  only  teacher  within  the 
prison,  in  an  era  (1825-1845)  when  prisoners  were  rarely  taught 
even  the  three  R's.    The  end  of  our  period  under  review  marks  in 
the  main  the  beginning  of  a  systematic  effort  to  secure  schooling 
for  prisoners.    The  Connecticut  chaplain  was  suggesting  two  hours 
a  week  for  regular  moral  and  general  educational  teaching.     The 
Bible  was  the  customary  text  book  for  teaching  spelling  and  reading. 
No  class-room  instruction  was  held.     The  evening  period  was  the 
only  available  time  for  instruction,  and  the  picture  is  vivid,  to  the 
student  of  prison  history,  of  the  chaplain  standing  in  the  semi-dark 
corridor,  before  the  cell  door,  with  a  dingy  lantern  hanging  to  the 
grated  bars,  and  teaching  to  the  wretched  convict  in  the  darkness 
beyond  the  grated  door  the  rudiments  of  reading  or  of  numbers. 

In  any  prisons  that  permitted  occasional  communication  of  con- 
victs by  letter  with  their  friends,  the  chaplain  wrote  the  letters. 
Prisoners  were  furnished  only  with  slates  and  slate  pencils.  The 
chaplain  also  organized  the  prison  library,  if  there  was  one.  A  con- 
siderable proportion  of  convicts  in  northern  prisons  could  read  and 
write  —  536  out  of  861  in  Sing  Sing  in  November,  1844 ;  210  others 
could  read  but  not  write.  A  Bible  was  generally  supposed  to  be  in 
everv  cell.  Only  the  better  oro^anized  prisons  maintained  libraries. 
Connecticut  had  a  small  library ;  each  prisoner  was  furnished  also 
with  a  weekly  temperance  paper,  and  a  religious  paper.  Massa- 
chusetts had  a  prison  library  of  several  hundred  volumes,  initiated 
by  a  donation  of  $50,  ' '  sent  by  the  mother  of  a  life  prisoner  to  her 
son,  to  furnish  him  with  proper  reading."     The  prisoners  in  the 


344  History  of  American  Prisons 

through  the  years.  Wardens  and  members  of  boards  of  inspectors 
came  and  went  —  learning  so  far  as  they  could  their  new  duties, 
but  sensing  that  their  tenure  of  office  was  liable  to  be  short.  Adher- 
^  \  ence  to  the  customs  and  principles  that  had  appeared  to  their 
predecessors  safe  and  sound  was  but  natural.  There  were  few 
men  whose  personalities  thrust  themselves  above  the  mediocrity  of 
the  average  warden.  In  this  period  there  projected  the  figures  of 
Elam  Lynds,  Gershom  Powers,  Samuel  L.  Wood  of  the  Eastern 
Penitentiary,  Moses  and  Amos  Pilsbury  of  Wethersfield,  and  Sam- 
uel Parsons  of  Virginia,  followed  in  that  State  by  the  conscientious 
Morgan.  The  names  are  few  and  among  them  only  those  of  the 
Pilsburys  have  endured.  At  the  very  close  of  the  period  we  find 
Zebulon  R.  Brockway,  who  was  to  be  in  his  long  life  the  devoted 
student  of  the  methods  of  Amos  Pilsbury,  as  guard  in  the  Connec- 
ticut State  prison,  then  associated  with  Pilsbury  at  Albany  in  the 
county  penitentiary,  then  manager  of  the  Detroit  House  of 
Correction,  then  founder,  with  Enoch  C.  Wines  and  others  of  the 
New  York  State  Reformatory  at  Elmira,  then  for  many  years  its 
superintendent,  to  become  the  greatest  practical  administrator  in 
this  country  of  the  reformatory  type  of  institution  —  all  the  time 
growing  as  a  philosopher  in  penological  and  criminological  matters, 
to  become  finally  the  ''grand  old  man"  of  the  wardens  and  the 
superintendents  of  the  United  States,  and  finally,  to  die  peacefully 
at  the  age  of  93  at  his  home  in  Elmira,  New  York,  in  October,  1920. 

Brockway,  the  sole  figure  that  linked  the  distant  past,  which  we 
have  studied  in  this  volume,  with  the  present,  in  which  still  far  too 
many  of  the  conditions  herein  described  have  perpetuated  them- 
selves, and  in  which  still  many  of  the  theories  and  statements  we 
have  found  and  studied  are  maintained  and  repeated,  as  if  original 
and  having  the  value  of  new  discoveries ! 

The  writer  of  this  volume  closes  his  study  here  in  the  year  1845, 
the  first  of  the  activity  of  the  Prison  Association  of  New  York,  the 
organization  of  which  he  is,  after  three-quarters  of  a  century  of  the 
Association's  activity,  the  general  secretary.  Between  the  end  of 
our  study,  and  the  present  day,  lie  over  seventy-five  years,  a  period 
rich  in  daring  experiment,  as  well  as  in  the  evolution  of  already 
developing  methods  of  humane  and  wise  treatment  of  prisoners. 
He  (or  she)  who  may  write  the  second,  and  final  volume,  of  the 
history  of  prison  methods  in  our  country  will  live,  during  an 
extended  period  of  study  and  exploration,  in  a  field  of  wonderful 
interest,  the  field  of  the  growth  of  the  reformatory,  the  indeter- 
minate sentence,  parole,  the  specialized  institutions,  the  juvenile 
courts,  the  practice  of  probation,  the  prison  reform  and  prisoners' 
relief  organizations,  the  honor  system,  the  farm  colonies,  the  indi- 
vidualization of  punishment  and  of  discipline,  the  rise  of  confer- 
ences and  congresses  on  prison  methods,  and  finally,  the  growth  of 
the  belief  that  in  the  community  itself,  long  before  the  so-called 
criminal  finds  his  ultimate  way  into  correctional  and  penal  institu- 
tions, lie  many  of  the  causes,  and  consequently  lie  many  of  the 
responsibilities  for  the  presence  of  crime. 


History  of  American  Prisons  345 

Yet,  in  this  second  great  period,  the  period  upon  whose  threshold 
we  pause,  we  doubt  if  there  will  be  found  greater  interest,  and  more 
stimulating  exploration,  than  in  the  first  and  far  less  clarified 
period  which  we  have  studied.  In  the  progress  of  our  study,  the 
forms  of  men  long  gone  have  risen  repeatedly  before  us  —  Lownes, 
Bradford,  Livingston,  Eddy,  Lynds,  Powers,  Brittin,  Hopkins, 
Wood,  Parsons,  the  Pilsburys,  Combe,  Doctor  Bache,  and  many 
others.  Who  of  all  the  readers  —  if  there  be  such  of  this  history  — 
have  known  many  —  or  any  —  of  them  before.  We  have  gained 
them  as  our  acquaintances  through  our  study,  and  we  are  the  richer 
therefor.  They  have  been  men  of  varying  capacities  and  tempera- 
ments and  methods.  Some  of  them  have  been  cruel  disciplinarians, 
some  have  been  persistently  humane,  some  have  been  theorists,  and 
have  touched  only  slightly  in  practical  ways  the  prison  field.  Yet 
they  all  have  contributed  to  the  great  prison  systems  of  the  present 
day  —  and  it  is  with  a  feeling  of  gladness  that  the  writer  believes 
that,  to  an  extent,  their  contributions  to  what  we  possess  to-day 
have  been  for  the  first  time  somewhat  fully  defined  for  modern 
students,  and  their  services  recorded  and  made  available  to  the 
present  day. 

And  it  seems  fitting  that  we  turn  at  last  to  that  woman  who  in 
so  many  ways  went  about  doing  good  in  the  prison  field,  in  those 
crucial  days,  Dorothea  Lynde  Dix,  the  woman  who  has  given  us 
the  most  cogent  and  graphic  outline  of  the  prisons  in  the  period 
at  which  we  close  our  study  —  eminent  fighter  for  the  betterment 
of  the  conditions  of  the  insane,  the  pauper  and  the  prisoner.  We 
quote,  in  conclusion,  from  her  some  words  that  at  the  end  of  this 
study  are  wholly  pertinent,  and  which  for  many  of  us  have  the 
same  application  that  they  had  for  Dorothea  Dix,  seventy-five  years 
ago: 

"Sincerely  do  I  regret  that  I  have  so  little  leisure  to  give  to  the  illustra- 
tion of  these  important  subjects,  upon  which  volumes  might  be  written,  show- 
ing the  origin,  progress  and  prospects  of  a  reform  so  eminently  affecting 
social  order,  and  the  civil  institutions  of  the  Kepublic.  Years  of  uninter- 
mitted  labor  and  vigilance  are  necessary  for  producing  practically  beneficial 
results,  through  the  influences  of  these  disciplinary  institutions. 

*  *  Society,  during  the  last  hundred  years,  has  been  alternately  perplexed  and 
encouraged,  respecting  the  two  great  questions  —  how  shall  the  criminal  and 
pauper  be  disposed  of,  in  order  to  reduce  crime  and  reform  the  criminal  on 
the  one  hand,  and,  on  the  other,  to  diminish  pauperism  and  restore  the  pauper 
to  useful  citizenship?  Though  progress  has  been  made,  through  the  efforts 
of  energetic  and  enlightened  persons,  directed  to  the  attainment  of  these  ends, 
all  know  that  society  is  very  far  from  realizing  their  accomplishment.  We 
accord  earnest  and  grateful  praise  to  those  who  have  procured  the  benefits  at 
present  possessed;  and  with  careful  zeal,  we  would  endeavor  to  advance  a 
work,  which  succeeding  generations  must  toil  to  perfect  and  complete." 


History  of  American  Prisons  347 


BIBLIOGRAPHY. 


Account  of  the  Massachusetts  State  Prison,  by  Board  of  Visitors.  Charlestown, 
Mass.,  1806.  (Also  Rules  and  Regulations  of  the  Massachusetts  State 
Prisons,  in  Appendix  to  Account  of  the  Mass.  State  Prison,  1811.) 
S.  Etheridge,  Boston. 

Account  of  the  Principal  Lazarettos  in  Europe,  An.  John  Howard,  Warring- 
ton, England,  1789. 

Biographical  Sketch  of  Amos  Pilsbury.  William  Hunt  (Albany,  1849,  Joel 
Munsell,  printer). 

Boston  Prison  Discipline  Society.  Annual  Reports,  1826,  1845.  (Twenty- 
ninth  Annual  Report,  1854:     "A  Review  of  Thirty  Years.") 

Brief  Account  of  the  Construction,  Management  and  Discipline  of  New  York 
State  Prison  at  Auburn.    Gershom  Powers  (Doubleday,  New  York,  1826). 

B^ief  Sketch  of  Origin  and  History  of  State  Penitentiary  of  Eastern  District 
^      of  Pennsylvania.     Robert  Vaux   (McLaughlin  Bros.,  Philadelphia,  1872). 

Bulfinch,  Charles,  Report  of.  Directed  by  the  President  of  the  United  States 
to  visit  prisons  for  the  District  of  Columbia.  (Green,  Washington,  D.  C, 
1829.) 

Corrections  and  Prevention.     Fred  G.  Pettigrove.     Vol.  II.    (Boston,   1904). 

Description  and  Historical  Sketch  of  Massachusetts  State  Prison.    1816.    Board 

of  Directors  of  Mass.  Prison  (Etheridge,  Charlestown). 
Die  Gefangnissbaukunst.     Karl  Krohne  (Hamburg,  1887). 
Die  Neuren  Strafe  und  Besserungs  Systeme.     Rudolph  von  Julius    (Berlin, 

\  1843).  ^- 

Description  des  Prisons  ameliorees  de  Gand.    Sir  T.  F.  Buxton  (Philadelphia). 

Des  Prisons  de  Philadelphie.  Francois  Alexandre  Frederic,  due  de  La  Roche- 
foucauld-Liancourt  (Par  un  Europeen,  Second  Edition,  Amsterdam, 
Holtrop,  1799). 

Encyclopaedia  Americana  (Prison  Discipline).    Vol.  X.    1832. 

Enquiry  how  far  the  punishment  of  death  is  necessary  in  Pennsylvania,  An. 
William  Bradford.     (With  an  account  of  the  gaol  and  penitentiary  house 
^„^.  of  Philadelphia,  by  Caleb  Lownes.)     Philadelphia,  T.  Dobson,  1793. 

Essentials  of  a  Penitentiary  System  as  Seen  by  Ducpetiaux.     Preface  VIII. 

Fifty  Years  of  Prison  Service.    Zebulon  R.  Brockway  (New  York,  1912). 

Governor's  Message  in  Journal  of  New  York  Assembly,  1819. 

Ideale  and  Irrtume  Ruckblucke  und  Ausblicke  auf  die  Entwikslung  des 
Gefangniswesens.     Karl  Krohne  (Berlin,  1908). 

Inside  Out,  or  an  interior  view  of  the  New  York  State  Prison.  W.  A.  Coffey 
(New  York,  James  Costigan,  1823). 

John  Bremm,  His  Prison  Bars.     A.  A.  Hopkins  (New  York,  1888). 

Journal,  House  of  Delegates.    Years  1818  to  1845.    Virginia. 

Journal,  House  of  Delegates.    Years  1822  to  1836.    Maryland. 

Journal  of  Prison  Discipline  and  Philanthropy.     Vol.  I.    Pennsylvania. 
JTuvenile  Delinquents.     Mary  Carpenter  (London,  1853). 

Lehrbuch  der  Gefangniskunde  unter  Berucksichtigung  der  Kriminalstatistik 
und  Kriminalpolitik.     Karl  Krohne   (Stuttgart,  1889). 

Letter  from  Gershom  Powers  in  answer  to  a  letter  of  the  Hon.  Edward 
Livingston  in  relation  to  the  Auburn  State  Prison.  Read  in  the  Legis- 
lature of  Pennsylvania,  Jan.  23,  1829.  (Albany,  Croswell  and  Van 
Benthuysen.) 


348  History  of  American  Prisons 

Laws  of  the  Commonwealth,  Boston,  Mass.,  1829. 

^ife  of  Thomas  Eddy.     Samuel  L.  Knapp  (London,  1836). 

London  Society  for  Prison  Discipline.  Report  of  the  Committee  for  1820. 
Rules  for  Gaols,  1821. 

Memorial  of  Society  for  Prevention  of  Juvenile  Delinquency,  New  York  Legis- 
lature, Document  of  House  of  Refuge,  1832,  ] 
Memoir  of  Joseph  Curtis,  a  model  man.     C.  M.  feedgw,i^k  (New  York,  1858). 
Minutes  of  Testimony  taken  before  John  Q.  Wilson.'    Hartford,  1834. 
-^  New  York  Assembly  Documents.     Years:    1831,  1834,'i:835,  1840,  1841,  1842. 

^New  York  Assembly  Journal.     Years:     1819,   1820,   1821,   1822,   1823,  1824, 
1825,  1827,  1833. 

New  York  Senate  Documents,  1834. 

^^New  York  Senate  Journal.     Years:    1827,  1828,  1829. 

— '  New  York  Laws.     Laws  of  1824,  Chap.  126.     Act  of  Incorporation.     Laws  of 
1829,  Chap.  302. 

-'   Notes  on  the  United  States  of  North  America.     George  Combe    (Edinburgh, 
1841). 

Notes  sur  les  Prisons  de  la  Suisse.  Francis  Cunningham  (Barbezar  et 
Delarue,  Geneve,  1828). 

Notice  statistique  sur  1  'apptication  de  1  'emprisonnement  cellulaire  en  Belgique, 
1857.     Ed.  Ducpetiaux. 

Notices  on  the  Original  and  Successive  Efforts  to  Improve  the  Discipline  of 
the  Prison  at  Philadelphia  and  to  Reform  the  Criminal  Code  of  Penn- 
sylvania.    Robert  Vaux  (Philadelphia,  Kimber  and  Sharpless,  1826). 

Observations  on  Penal  Jurisprudence.    William  Roscoe  (London,  1819).    Addi- 
tional Observations  on  Penal  Jurisprudence   (London,  1823). 
On  the  Penitentiary  System  in  the  United  States  and  of  its  Application  in 

France.     Gustave  de  Beaumont  et  Alexis  jle   Tocqueville    (Paris,   1832). 

Translated  from  the  French  by  Francis  Lieber   (Ir'niladelphia,  1833). 

Pictures  From  Prison  Life.  An  Historical  Sketch  of  the  Massachusetts  State 
Prison.     Gideon  Haynes  (Boston,  1869). 

Preamble  to  Amendment  to  Penal  Laws,  Virginia,  1789. 

Prison  Association  of  New  York,  First  Annual  Report,  1844. 

Prison  Discipline  in  America.  Francis  C.  Gray.  (In  Vol.  III.  of  the  col- 
lected volumes  of  the  Boston  Prison  Discipline   Society,   Boston,   1847.) 

I*roceedings  of  the  State  Convention  of  Mechanics,  1834,  1841.  Mechanics 
Magazines,  New  York. 

Rapports  sur  les  Penitenciers  des  Etats  Unis.  F.  A.  Metz  et  Guillaume  Blouet. 
(Paris,  1837.) 

Redollections   of   Windsor  Prison:      Containing   Sketches   of  its   History   and 

Discipline;   with  Appropriate  Strictures  and  Moral  and  Religious  Reflec- 
y   tions.    John  Reynolds  (Boston,  A.  W.  Wright,  1834). 
vKemarks  on  Cellular  Separation.     W.  P.  Foulke  (Philadelphia,  1861). 
Remarks  on  Prisons  and  Prison  Discipline  in  the  United  States.     Dorothea 

Dix  (Philadelphia,  J.  Kite  &  Co.,  1845). 
Remarks  on  the  Form  and  Construction  of  Prisons  \nth  Appropriate  Designs. 

Published   by   the    Committee    of   the    Society    for   the   Improvement    of 

Prison  Discipline.     (London,  1826.) 

Eeports : 

Connecticut:  Report  of  Committee  on  State  Prisons,  1833  and  1842. 

Connecticut:  Report  of  Directors,  Wethersfield,  1835  and  1844. 

Connecticut:  Report  of  Legislative  Committee,  1832. 


History  of  American  Prisons  349 

Connecticut:     Eeport  of  Directors,  Hartford,  1841. 

Maryland:     Journal,  House  of  Delegates,  1822  and  1836. 

Maryland:      Eeport  of   Committee   appointed  by  Board   of   Directors   of 

Maryland  Penitentiary,   1828.  to  Visit  tne  Penitentiaries  and  Prisons 

in  the  City  of  Philadelphia  and  State  of  New  York. 
Maryland:     Report  of  Select  Committee  on  the  Penitentiary,  1836. 
Maryland:     Report  of  the  Committee  on  Prison  Manufactures,  1842. 
Massachusetts:      Report   of  Massachusetts   Commission  on   State  Prison, 

1817. 
Massachusetts:     Report  of  Board  of  Visitors,  1823. 
Massachusetts:     Report  of  Standing  Committee  Common  Council,  Boston 

House  of  Refuge,  1832. 
Massachusetts:      Report,    Board    of    State    Charities,    Boston    House    of 

Refuge,  Annual  Reports,  1831,  1836,  1865.     Special  Report  on  Prisons 

and  Prison  Discipline,  1865. 
Massachusetts:     Senate  Documents;  Years  1830,  1834,  1843,  1844. 
New  Jersey:     Report  of  Joint  Committee,  Votes  of  Assembly,  1830,  1837, 

1838. 
New  Jersey:     Report  of  Governor's  Message,  January,  1837. 
New   York:      Annual   Reports    of   Society    for   Reformation   of   Juvenile 

Delinquents,  for  Years  1835,  1838,  1839. 

New  York:     Annual  Reports  of  New  York  House  of  Refuge,  for  Years 

1834,  1835,  1838,  1839,  1840,  1841. 

New  York:     Annual  Report  for  1815,  Newgate  Prison,  New  York  City. 

New  York:     Report  of  Inspectors,  Auburn,  1822. 

New  York:  Report  on  the  Penitentiary  System  of  the  United  States, 
Crawford,  New  York,  1834. 

New  York:  Report  of  Agent  of  the  Mount  Pleasant  State  Prison,  No.  92, 
in  Senate,  New  York,  1834;  also  1843. 

New  York:     Report  of  Select  Committee  of  New  York  Senate,  1831. 

New  York:  Report  of  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Pauperism,  1821, 
1822. 

Pennsylvania :  Report  of  Joint  Committee  of  Legislature  of  Pennsylvania, 
relative  to  Eastern  Penitentiary,  Harrisburg,  1835. 

Pennsylvania:     Fourth  Report,  Inspectors  of  Eastern  Penitentiary,  1832. 

Pennsylvania:  Annual  Reports  of  Board  of  Inspectors  of  Eastern  Peni- 
tentiary, for  Years  1830,  1831,  1834,  1837,  1838,  1842,  1844. 

Pennsylvania:  Report  of  Committee  appointed  in  1816  to  consider  subject 
of  the  State  Prison  of  Massachusetts  and  to  inquire  into  the  mode  of 
governing  the  Penitentiary  of  Pennsylvania,  1817. 

Pennsylvania:  Report  of  Charles  Shaler,  Edward  King,  and  T.  I. 
Wharton,  a  commission  created  by  the  Legislature  in  1826  to  study 
prison  discipline. 

Sketch  of  the  Principal  Transactions  of  the  Philadelphia  Society  for  Allevi- 
ating the  Misery  of  Public  Prisons.  From  Origin  to  Present  Time. 
(Philadelphia,  1859,  Merrihew  and  Thompson.) 

V/Bociety  in  America,  Vol.  II.     Harriet  Martineau  (London,  1837). 

State  Prisons,  Hospitals,  etc..  Embracing  their  History,  Finances,  etc.     Vol. 

II.     C.  M.  Brush,  State  Printer   (Harrisburg,  Pa.,  1897). 
State  of  Prisons  in  England  and  Wales,  The.     John  Howard   (Warrington, 

England,  1780).  ^ 

Torture  and  Homicide  in  an  American  State  Prison.     Harper's  Weeklv,  Dec. 

18,  1858.  '' 


350  History  of  American  Prisons 

Travels  in  North  America  in  the  Years  1827  and  1828.     Basil  Hall   (Phila- 
delphia, 1829). 
Travels  Through  the  Northern  Parts  of  the  United  States  in  the  Years  1807 

and  1808.    E.  A.  Kendall.    Vol.  I. 
View  of  New  York  State  Prison  in  the  City  of  New  York,  by  a  member  of  the 

^institution.     New  York,  1815. 
y{sit  to  the  Philadelphia  Prison.     Eobert  J.  Turnbull   (James  Phillips  &  Co., 
^        London,  1797). 

William   Penn   as   a   Lawgiver.     H.   L.   Carson    (Pennsylvania   Magazine   of 

History  and  Biography,  Vol.  30). 

.^^  Within  Prison  Walls.     T.  M.  Osborne  (D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  New  York,  1914). 

Works  of  J^dward  Livingston,  Vol.  I.  '  "  " 

^^    Writings  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  Vol.  I  and  IV.     Edited  by  P.  L.  Ford  (New 

York,  1892-1899). 


\ 


5?J^     CIRCULATION  DEPARTMENT      cJ71j 


RETURN  TO  the  circulation  desk  of  any 
University  of  California  Library 
or  to  the 
NORTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 
BIdg.  400,  Richmond  Field  Station 
University  of  California 
Richmond,  CA  94804-4698 


r 


ALL  BOOKS  MAY  BE  RECALLED  AFTER  7  DAYS 

•  2-month  loans  may  be  renewed  by  calling 
(510)642-6753 

•  1  -year  loans  may  be  recharged  by  bringing 
books  to  NRLF 

•  Renewals  and  recharges  may  be  made  4 
days  prior  to  due  date. 

DUE  AS  STAIVIPED  BELOW 


AUG  14 1989 


JAM  18  2000 


12,000(11/95) 


DerKeiey 


(Q1173Sl0)476^A-32 


ifomia 

-Ub 


^173Sl0)476-A-33  '  Berkeley 

iD2lA-60m-6,'69  University  of  Califoma^ 


LD21A 
(J9096sl0)476-A-32 


University  • 

Berketey 


inn» 


ii<m    *-/ ir-iN-*iv*^ 


General  Library 


U.C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


CaQ7Q27?T7 


^  ,^    UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA%8RARY     ^       t 


